The Hum and the Shiver (36 page)

After the service, Brownyn and the other women went off together into the woods. Craig started to go with the men, but Aiden suddenly took his hand, the same grim look on his face.

“I’m supposed to walk you back to your car.”

“You are.”

He nodded. “Bronwyn said to tell you this part was private. She said you’d understand.”

“Okay,” he said. He looked back toward the woods, but everyone had vanished into its shadows.

As he drove away, he kept thinking he saw movement along the tops of the trees, as if things flew up from the forest and into the evening’s purple sky. He finally put it down to a trick of the light.

35

Craig visited the town of Cricket on the Monday following Kell Hyatt’s funeral. When he looked up the directions online, he found a link to the town’s official Web site, and read its history with wonder.

The world watched in 1875 as famous British author, statesman, and social reformer Roy Howard dedicated the new town of Cricket. It was to be a cooperative, class-free society, a Utopia where artisans, tradesmen, and farming families could build a new community through agriculture, temperance, and high moral principles. Today, in a gentle mountain setting little changed by twenty-first-century technology, this would-be Shangri-la survives. More than two dozen of its decorative, gabled buildings remain, and Cricket’s dual Victorian and Appalachian heritage is everywhere visible.

The Roy Howard Library in Cricket had one door and a spire like a church, only with no cross atop it. The roof was plated with metal sheets stained to look like the original copper. It stood in a little grove of trees next to the visitors’ center, with no connection to the sidewalk.

Inside, the library consisted of one big room, with ten-foot-high shelves along every available bit of the walls. Two standing shelf units took up the middle of the floor, along with a table covered with elaborate first editions.

The librarian, a tall freckled woman with short hair and glasses, stood as he entered. “Welcome to the Howard Library. I have to tell you not to touch anything without putting on these.” She tapped a box of disposable cotton gloves.

“Why?” Craig asked.

“Almost every book in here is a rare first edition over a hundred years old. The oil from your fingers can damage the paper. Were you looking for anything in particular?”

“I’m supposed to ask to see the painting.”

She gestured at the walls above the shelves, where several old-fashioned paintings hung in the dimness. “Which painting?”

“I’m not sure. I was told just to ask to see
the
painting.”

“By whom?”

“Bronwyn Hyatt, actually.”

The librarian’s expression turned skeptical. “The war hero? Well, she
is
a Cloud County Tufa, I’ve heard.”

“She is,” Craig assured her.

“Then I know the one she means.”

“Wait for me,” said another voice.

Craig turned. Don Swayback had entered silently, and now offered his hand. “Hey there, Reverend. Good to see you again.”

“Don,” Craig said as they shook. “Missed you in church yesterday.”

“Stayed out in the wind too long,” he said, and grinned as if it were a private joke.

“What brings you here?”

“From what I just overheard, the same thing as you. Somebody told me to come check out the painting.”

The librarian led them to the back of one of the freestanding shelf units. There, hanging on the end piece, was a painting two feet high by a foot wide, displayed in an elaborate wooden frame that made it appear much larger. It depicted a score of diminutive European storybook fairies gathered around a dominant central figure. This main subject faced away from the viewer and held what looked like an ax above his head. He seemed about to bring it down on a hickory nut at his feet. Stems of grass and flower blossoms laced through the image gave it both scale and depth. The style was a kind of hyperrealism, in which the characters’ proportions seemed slightly distorted beneath the wealth of surface detail.

“The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke,”
the librarian said. “It’s one of our most prized pieces. And it’s not the watercolor copy, either. That’s in the Tate Gallery in London. This,” she said with pride, “is the original.”

Don noted its location. “You don’t exactly show it off.”

“We’ve left it exactly where the charter residents of Cricket placed it,” the librarian said. “Would you like to see something especially impressive about it?”

She took out her keychain and switched on a tiny flashlight. “Watch this.” She slowly moved the circle of light across the surface.

It was astounding. The painting was almost done in three dimensions, with layer upon layer of paint creating a depth hidden by flat illumination. The librarian continued, “The artist worked on this one canvas for eight years, from 1855 to 1864, while confined in an asylum after he killed his father.”

Craig barely heard her words. To the left of center the figure of a woman, looking away as if distracted by her friend behind her, bore an uncanny resemblance to Bronwyn despite the artist’s stylization. The similarity was so strong, he couldn’t believe it was mere coincidence, yet how could it be otherwise?

“They all look like Tufas,” Don said softly.

Craig slowly nodded. “Wow. Who told you to come see this?”

“A little Tufa girl I met. You?” But before Craig could answer, Don looked at his watch and exclaimed, “Oh, hell, I’ve got to go, I’m going to be late. Good to see you again, Reverend.”

“Where are you off to?” Craig asked.

“I’ve got my exclusive interview this afternoon with Bronwyn Hyatt. What about you?”

He smiled. “I have to finish some work early to get ready for a date tonight.” He deliberately didn’t mention Bronwyn’s name.

“A date?” Don teased. “Are preachers
allowed
to date?”

“Yes,” Craig deadpanned. “We’re not priests.”

Don laughed. “I reckon not. Well, hope my interview and your date both work out.”

“Same here.”

The two men thanked the librarian and went outside. Don stopped as he opened his car door. “Oh, and if you’re looking for something to do on your date, I’m playing at a local barn dance. Bronwyn knows where it is. I’ve got a new song about all the recent trouble, you know with Dwayne Gitterman and that patrolman.”

“You wrote a song about it?”

He shrugged. “Seemed like the thing to do. Even the Tufa need a reporter of some kind, don’t they?” He climbed into his car and started the engine.

“Hey, wait!” Craig called. “How did you know I had a date with Bronwyn?”

Don rolled down the driver’s side window, shook his head, and shrugged. “A good reporter never reveals his sources.” As he drove away, he waved and called out, “See you tonight, maybe!”

Craig stared after him. He finally laughed and shook his head, got into his own car, and headed back into Cloud County.

SONG CREDITS

All song lyrics are original except the following, which are all public domain:

CHAPTER SEVEN

“When Love Gets You Fast in Her Clutches” (composed 1795; words by Thomas Morton, music by Dr. Samuel Arnold [1742–1802])

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“On My Journey Home” by Isaac Watts (July 17, 1674– November 25, 1748)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“John Barleycorn” (traditional English folk song)

A version of the song is included in the Bannatyne Manuscript of 1568.

http://www.pdmusic.org/folk/John_Barleycorn.txt

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Wildwood Flower,” aka “I’ll Twine ’Mid the Ringlets” (composed approximately 1860; words by Maud Irving, music by Joseph Philbrick Webster)

http://www.pdmusic.org/webster/jpw60itmtr.txt

Final verse modified from the traditional by the author

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“Shady Grove” (traditional; eighteenth-century American variation of the seventeenth-century English ballad “Matty Groves”)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shady_Grove_(song)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“Cripple Creek” (melody, lyrics, and chords from p. 232 [#118] from
The Folk Songs of North America: In the English Language
by Alan Lomax)

http://www.pdmusic.org/folk/Cripple_Creek.txt

Modified from the traditional by the author

“Rye Whisky” (traditional folksong)

Mentioned in
American Ballads and Folk Songs
by John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax (Dover, 1994; originally Macmillan, 1934)

http://www.pdmusic.org/folk/Rye_Whisky.txt

Modified from the traditional by the author

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“The White Cockade” by Robert Burns (1759–1796)

http://www2.bc.edu/~hafner/lmm/music-articles/white_cockade_ryan.html

http://www.contemplator.com/scotland/whitcock.html

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“The Bird Song” by Carrie Jacobs Bond (composed 1899)

http://www.pdmusic.org/bond/cjb99tbs.txt

Modified from the original by the author

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“The Grave of Gentle Annie” written by William Shakespeare Hays (1837–1907) (composed 1858)

http://www.pdmusic.org/hays/wsh58tgoga.txt

Modified from the original by the author

“Mercy’s Dream” by Septimus Winner (1827–1902) (composed 1854)

http://www.pdmusic.org/winner/sw54md.txt

Modified from the original by the author

BOOKS BY ALEX BLEDSOE

Blood Groove

The Girls with Games of Blood

The Sword-Edged Blonde

Burn Me Deadly

Dark Jenny

The Hum and the Shiver

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE HUM AND THE SHIVER

Copyright © 2011 by Alex Bledsoe

All rights reserved.

A Tor
^®
eBook

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
^®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN 978-0-7653-2744-4

First Edition: October 2011

eISBN 978-1-4299-8502-4