Stony Clove, a little town snuggled in a rugged mountain pass, was cleared and farmed by Dutch settlers one hundred years ago. It was rumored amongst the townsfolk that the solid rock of the area had been forged by the Devil himself who, in a fury, had fashioned it after his own cleft foot.
Asher and Ginny were born and raised in this town, with its old fashioned traditions and tales. The most famous was the story of the ghost of William Sutherland and the legend that had grown around his life--and death--at Stony Clove. The mystique of the Sutherland homestead captivated Asher and Ginny, leading them to discoveries about the legend, and themselves, that would bond them together for an eternity.
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Release date:
July 15, 1995
Publisher:
Tom Doherty Associates
Print pages:
160
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Chapter One
THE FROLIC
I was born during a Frolic--brought on, Mama still laughs, by the Dutch clogging dance she did to my daddy's fiddle tune.
Hard labor fills our harvesting weeks, but so does dancing, visiting, and the wonderful Kermis festival. It's then that far flung neighbors gather at our usually quiet village--from as far north as Albany and from down the Hudson River toward Poughkeepsie town. We farmers trade or sell our best apples, herbs, yard-goods, and sundries. Fortune tellers and jugglers come hawking. I even saw a dancing bear once, trapped and trained right here in these Catskill mountains. It all begins with theFrolic. But the Harvest Frolic of 1804 did not start off very well.
That was Asher Woods's doing. He put snakes in the cider, which gave Rebecca Chase the vapors, sending her fainting into the bowl, then onto the floorboards of Community House. Asher was gone by the time Rebecca's father and two brothers came thrashing after him. Long gone. And he was the only boy at the Frolic taller than me.
"Lost your partner, what'll you do?" Rebecca taunted me in her smallest, meanest voice. Then another of Asher's snakes wound by. I rescued the poor creature out from under her. "Look! Ginny Rockwell touches the evil serpent!" she wailed, before she fell to swooning again.
"It's only a garter snake--"
I started to show it to the crowd gathering around, but felt Mama's hands on my shoulders.
"Fetch us a little water, Ginny." She turned me to the door.
"Devil's instrument, Devil's boy ..." I heard Rebecca Chase moan behind me.
Those words iced up my blood. Not with fear of him, mind. I had never feared Asher Woods. Some called him evil and ungrateful to the Chases, who took him in when his own family went west. A Christian deed, folkssaid--none more than the Chases themselves. But even Mama once remarked on how it appeared the Chases took Asher Woods more to their plow than their hearts. And we might know, since our small farm bordered the Chase's spread.
I don't remember his people at all. Seems to me Asher always had the wild, feary eyes of an orphan. Folks say they were part Indian, because they didn't know how to make yeast bread or build themselves a proper house. They lived like gypsies, camping up and down Batavia Kill, weaving baskets and making brooms.
They were weaving more than baskets, the Chases held. They wove spells, and their child might grow to do the same. Our neighbors are good and simple farmers, but Sam Chase was the biggest landowner and almost every mother's son owed him something. So whenever the crops failed, or a cow died, or a barn burned, folks wondered along with the Chases where and what Asher Woods was doing at the time.
I didn't wonder. I knew a different Asher Woods. One set apart from the Chase's wrath, the town's fears of a family they didn't understand. Asher was stealthy, yes, and certainly quick to anger. But even when he argued with Mr. Steenwyck our schoolmaster, his eyeswere bright with the love of learning. After my daddy died, Mama had to sell our best winter wheat field to the Chases to keep us on the land. It was Asher who guarded our sheep from mountain wolves and wildcats while we worked to wall in our diminished twelve acres.
When I remarked on how Mama was going short on her healing salve, Asher took me climbing on the highest mountain of the range that encircles our valley. We call it High Peak; he calls it Middle Sister; and it's where the balsams grow. He showed me the mighty Hudson from the summit. "The river which flows both ways--Muhheahkkunnuck." He laughed when I tried to work the strange sounds through my voice, but said it over once, then twice again, until I'd mastered it myself. Asher swore there was salt in the Hudson from the great Atlantic. I thought he was funning then, but when I asked Mr. Steenwyck, he said it's so.
That day was the first I'd seen our valley from above, like a bird in flight. It took on a measureless beauty of rolling greens, sparkling waters, and rising mists. The piney woods' scent made me feel spirited off the earth itself. I opened my arms wide.
"It's like heaven!"
"What do you know of heaven?" he scoffed at me.
"Only what Mama and I speak of together and what we listen for at church," I began, but could feel his anger strengthening at the very mention of church. The Chases called him godless, unredeemable. I suddenly wanted to know the truth of it.
"What is your heaven like, Asher?" I asked him quietly.
He frowned. "Your ma's wearing down the floorboards." He loaded the branches over his shoulder.
Asher was right. Mama was pacing, fretful and angry, when I returned. That is, until I put the balsam boughs in her arms and told her I was in Asher's company. Then she brought out our Bible and laid one hand on my head, the other over the names of her babies that died, and prayed softly for Asher's deliverance. She attached Asher to those two little boys, asking them to look after him in the ways we could not.
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