Free Where The Heart Lives by Marjorie Liu

WHERE THE
HEART LIVES
     
    By Marjorie M. Liu
     
    When Miss Lindsay finally
departed for the world beyond the wood, it meant that Lucy and Barnabus were
the only people left to care for her house and land, as well as the fine
cemetery she had kept for nearly twenty years outside the little town of Cuzco,
Indiana. It was an important job, not just for Lucy and Barnabus, but for
others, as well, who for years after would come and go, for rest or sanctuary. Bodies
needed homes, after all—whether dead or living.
    Lucy was only seventeen, and
had come to the cemetery in the spring, not one month before Miss Lindsay went
away. The girl’s father was a cutter at the limestone quarry. Her brothers
drove the team that hauled the stones to the masons. The men had no use for a
sister, or any reminder of the fairer sex; their mother had run away that
previous summer with a gypsy fortune-teller, though Lucy’s father insisted his
absent wife was off visiting relatives and would return. Eventually.
    When word reached the old
cutter that a woman named Miss Lindsay needed a girl to tend house, he made his
daughter pack a bag with lunch, her comb, and one good dress from her mother’s
closet—then set her on the first wagon heading toward Cuzco. No good-byes, no
messages sent ahead. Just chancing on fate that the woman would want his
daughter.
    Lucy remembered that wagon
ride. Mr. Wiseman, the driver, had been hauling turnips that day, the bulbous
roots covered beneath a burlap sheet to keep off the light drizzle: a cool
morning, with a sweet breeze. No one on the road except them, and later, one
other: an old man who stood at the side of the dirt track outside Cuzco,
dressed in threadbare brown clothes, with a thin coat and his white hair
slicked down from the rain. Pale eyes. Lost eyes. Staring at the green budding
hills as though the woods were where his heart lived.
    In his right hand, he held a
round silver mirror. A discordant sight, flashing and bright; Lucy thought she
heard voices in her head when she saw the reflecting glass: whispers like
birdsong, teasing and sweet.
    Mr. Wiseman did not wave at the
man, but Lucy did, out of politeness and concern. She received no response; as
though she were some invisible spirit, or the breeze.
    “Is he sick?” Lucy whispered to
Mr. Wiseman.
    “Sick and married,” said the
spindly man, in a voice so loud, she winced. He tugged his hat down over his
eyes. “Married, with no idea how to let go of the dead.”
     “His wife is gone?” Lucy
thought of her mother.
    “Gone, dead. That was Henry
Lindsay you saw. Man’s been like that for almost twenty years. Might as well be
dead himself.”
    Which answered almost nothing,
in Lucy’s mind. “What happened to her?”
    A sly smile touched Mr.
Wiseman’s mouth, and he glanced sideways. “Don’t know, quite. But she up and
died on their wedding night. I heard he hardly had a chance to touch her.”
    “That’s awful ,” Lucy said, not much caring for the
look in Mr. Wiseman’s eye, as though there was something funny about the idea. She
did not like, either, the other way he suddenly seemed to look at her; as
though she could be another fine story, for him.
    She edged sideways on the wagon
seat. Mr. Wiseman looked away. “People die, Miss Lucy. But it’s a shame it
happened so fast. I even heard said they were going to run away, all fancy. A
honeymoon, like they do out East in the cities.”
    Lucy said nothing. She did not
know much about such things. In her experience, there was little to celebrate
about being husband and wife. Just hard times, and loss, and anger. A little
bit of laughter, if you were lucky. But not often.
    She twisted around, looking
back. Henry still stood at the bend in the road, his feet lost in deep grass,
soaked and pale and staring at the woods, those smoky green hills rising and
falling like the back of some long fat snake. Her heart ached for him, just a
little, though she did not know why. His loss was a