“Maybe you can use this?” he asked with a shrug. “I’ve been watching it, and the family left a week ago.”
Etta thought she could do a thousand things with that nest, and she felt like he knew that, which made her heart almost flip. “Should we kiss?”
“Why?” he asked.
“Why not?”
He shrugged again. “Okay. I guess that’s a good reason.”
She leaned forward, puckered her lips, and clamped her eyes shut.
It took a while but Jackson finally brushed his lips across hers.
Their eyes both snapped back open, and they said “Yuck” in unison.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
The first time Jackson told Etta he loved her, they were fifteen years old. He’d left her a message in one of her dioramas, and used the Valentine’s candy hearts with the words on them to arrange it.
She pretended to be mad that he’d desecrate one of her masterpieces. Littered her image of what twilight in Cairo might look like with his note. But she let the candy stay in there until the ants crept through her window and ate it all.
And she loved that he said the word love first.
Being loved by him grew so big it became even better than the dioramas.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Mama dragged Etta out back. The sun had barely started to rise, a hint of its yellowy forehead peeking over the line of magnolias that marked the edge of their land. They raced through the gardens, ducking under a trellis of vine tomatoes and butter beans and bright, plump squash.
The chicken coop sat to the left, and even their rooster wasn’t up yet. Rows of fields stretched out as far as Etta could see, always reminding her of the beautiful cornrows Mama would braid into her hair, but these would bloom with melons and cabbage and potatoes instead of zigzagging curls. The slaughterhouse and smokehouse lurked to the right like twin shadows. And the Big House where Ms. Mildred and Granddaddy lived sat out in the distance, the white porch wrapping around its front like a perfect ribbon and the little oil lamps in the windows illuminated like eyes gazing out into the dark.
Dew coated their ankles, and the warmth of the day started to heat up their skin.
Etta walked as fast as she could with Mama toting her like a basket ready to spill its contents.
“We’re almost there,” Mama whispered.
“How far does Madame Peaks live?” Etta asked.
“She doesn’t live close by or far away.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ll see.”
At the edge of their land, Mama gave Etta a tiny bottle containing her heart fragments, set her against one of the magnolias to rest, then took out a little shovel and dug up one of its roots. She used a knife to sliver off three pieces. Etta heard her thank the tree.
“What are you doing?” Etta craned to see.
“Building a conjure door. Madame Peaks left this town—this world—when I was a young girl. But I always knew how to find her.” Mama pulled a letter from her pocket. “Now, once you go through, hurry on up to her house. You’ll see it. There’s no getting lost.” Mama got to work unpacking ingredients from her satchel and setting them on the ground.
Etta nodded.
Mama read the letter aloud. “Three magnolia roots to create the frame. A pinch of saltpeter to awaken them. A spoonful of cayenne to charge the conjure. A bowl of salt to purify the door. A cup of brick dust to protect the traveler. And a drop of the traveler’s blood.”
Before Etta could react, Mama had pierced the knife into the flesh of her fingertip and taken blood.
Mama scrambled back as a tiny fire popped and crackled in the heap. The air filled with a creaky, stretching sound. The roots grew into long braids, twisting and twirling until they were the length of long ropes. They coiled together into a wreath, gathering all of the ingredients from the pile like careful hands, then bloomed into a large trellis bursting with crimson flowers.
Etta’s eyes grew wide with wonder as a doorknob appeared within it.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Etta hobbled through the entry. She turned back to face her mama.
“You coming?” she asked, reaching back.
Mama shook her head no. “You’ve got to do it alone. But I’ll be waiting for you right here. Go straight to the house. Don’t wander. Don’t be curious.”
Etta gulped, but quickly the pain in her heart reminded her to move. Across a long thicket of grass sat a house, and it hung over a cliff like a tiny lip. She thought that one day the house might catch too much wind and tip over, tumbling down onto the rocks. The old lady’s treasure scattered like bones to be picked clean by vultures looking for nest objects.
A bottletree twinkled in the morning light. The blue glasses caught sunrays and any evil thing that might wander this far into her yard.
Her mama had a tree like this, tucked inside the garden so Ms. Mildred wouldn’t see it, and Etta remembered the night they’d put it up, the summer she’d turned nine. An ivory moon had overwhelmed the sky, its glow washing the plants with light. Mama had lined up a series of glass bottles of every color, shape, and size on the grass. They’d danced around the tree, tying the bottles to boughs and branches.
Etta approached the house with caution. Staring at the porch and how it wrapped around the house like a crooked smile. Bulbous red globes dangled in the big front window. Through the glass one could see shelves upon shelves of glass containers full of unrecognizable things. A tattered sign dropped like a spider above the doorway and in faded cursive lettering announced: MADAME EMMA PEAKS’S CURIOSITIES AND ROOTS.
Mama’s money felt like a ball of fire in Etta’s pocket. She’d given her several bills. She didn’t know how much it cost to repair a heart.
Would it be fifty dollars?
A hundred?
More?
Etta was afraid, but her heart couldn’t beat any faster. She took a deep breath and walked up the staircase. It wheezed and whined and announced her presence. Before Etta could raise her hand to knock, the door crept open.
“Come in, child,” a voice called. “I’ve been expecting you all day.”
Etta stepped inside the parlor. Clear jars revealed diseased bits of human viscera: pus-coated eyeballs, carbuncled flesh, gangrenous toes and fingers, spotted livers, lesion-covered kidneys, ribbons of blood vessels. The skulls of small animals paraded along an oak desk. Tonics and remedies, tinctures and salves, syrups and balms were featured for sale. A mortar and pestle and a bundle of brass surgical tools caught the red glint of the globes in the window, morphing them into demonic instruments.