The Stars and the Cookie Jar

“It’s not your house, boys. Come in by the door.” 

“Isn’t it yours?” Will, it took Seelie a moment, younger than Pen by maybe two years, who’d made his way in Asheville and come back to Litch Hollow last year with his wife – even younger. He was thin-shouldered, against Ambrose who knew the weight of living bodies and the dead, or Pen, who had always done whatever wanted doing, double-time if it meant ruining a school dress. He could go invisible in an autumn wood, like all the Greens, but he was too tidily dressed to follow his siblings off the main road. 

“It’s the sin-eater’s house.” Will couldn’t help a shiver. “I felt it in the – Pen, is that your stuff, mixed in with a sin-eater’s work?” 

“We can carry on outside, if you want.” 

Shame pushed at her, for the starkness of the shelves, the table bare of all but the two chipped glasses, the whiskey bottle and the Tarot pack; for the house gown that had been her mother’s and the double-plait of her hair, one side Pen’s work and one side Bran’s. 

“Will was about to shut up.” Ambrose tipped his tall hat. “Evening, Miss Seal. Don’t mind my brother. He dropped a half dime yesterday and he’s been a wet cat ever since.” 

“I don’t think he was about to shut up. He was just saying why you’re here.” Pen had the usual affinity, and steady affection, for their siblings; that was hidden away, now, under anger almost to the edge of contempt. “You broke in. It must be important.” 

Seelie fixed her eyes on the table’s ruined red oilcloth, on the cuff of Pen’s shirt that had been turned and mended four times with three colors of thread. There was no point reaching for what the cards had tried to say. Get up and be useful, girl, she told herself, as if she was in short skirts and not past thirty. Even if you can’t offer more than cold carrots – do fashion plates from Asheville eat carrot? – the chores need doing. 

Pen reached without looking, to rest a hand on her arm – for all the world as if they’d heard her thinking. 

“Mr. Stokes has too many girls to marry off. He’s selling south.” 

“When?”

Five minutes ago – there were too many Greens in the room for the clock to keep steady – Seelie would have sworn Pen was half wallpapered, because at least it was good whiskey; two minutes after that, blazing mad. Now they were only intently, absolutely listening. 

“Wednesday morning.” Ambrose had taken off his hat to put his gloves in, and he was crimping and crushing a terrible arc into the brim. “So you see why –” 

Pen cut him off. “Never mind dogs, his woods’ll be full of trackers by midnight tomorrow. By now, if he has the sense to pay them.” 

“He can’t afford ‘em. Not professionals.” 

“Oh that’s comforting, Brose. I won’t risk getting people shot to shreds.”  

“If you can have been there three days ago…” 

“If I can have danced on the head of a pin, three days. Go, yourself!  I’m not a dart for you to throw, Will.” 

“You’re top rail at it, sib. I don’t… I don’t do the trick much myself, any more. I was only suggesting!”

“Practice, and don’t make it my problem!”

“He means,” Ambrose said, fussing with thumb and forefinger at his black neckerchief as if his next words might cause a fight. “Stokes’ dogs had him looking like a raw ham last time, and now Betsy’ll put the bullet in him if Stokes’ overseer doesn’t.” 

“I don’t hear you worried about my skin, or my –” Pen closed their mouth, but it made Will Green startle back and Ambrose clear his throat. 

“I’m unmarried, for all that’s worth, but it doesn’t run true and we can’t pretend it. Too many people are at stake. I’d find myself two weeks from now, in Madeira.” 

“How many?” 

Will took a handbill from his coat pocket. It was set in fold-lines and it had been out in the weather, but At Sale Without Reserve was bold and tall enough to be read from the porch. “Twin seven-year-olds. A nine-year-old. A sixteen-year-old girl with her baby. Couple of interested men were in the Old Stones for supper,” he finished.

“Why were you there for supper?  Betsy finally show you to your own kitchen and tell you to work it out?” 

“My domestic arrangements are not the point. Georgia, Pen. They came up to Stokes’ from Georgia.” 

Pen tipped their chair back almost to oblivion, arms folded, eyes closed; left their brothers hanging, while Pen themself balanced and breathed. “You’ve wired ahead, at least?” 

“Just as the depot closed, and then came here.” Ambrose looked – Seelie didn’t know what it was; sad she might have said, or afraid, though his expressions were less enlivened by his gestures than Pen’s. “I know it costs, Pendrake.” 

She thought, until he said Pen’s name, he meant the telegram.