Shadowbridge by Gregory Frost Page B

She asked, “What’s happened, child?”
    Trembling, fidgeting, Leodora told her. A man had appeared, a stranger. He’d seen her and then run away. She clung to her aunt and cried, “But why
witch
! Why did he call me a witch? Why did he say that?”
    Dymphana replied, “Oh, child, it’s not you, it’s your mother used to swim there, too, and I’m—”
    Pressed against her, Leodora felt her aunt stiffen as both of them realized what had been said.
    “How do you know that?” She pushed away, no longer frightened. “You said you didn’t know anything, that my mother was gone before you came to Bouyan!”
    It seemed for a moment that Dymphana might try to bluff her way out of the trap, as if she weighed whether she should compound the denial with another obvious lie. Finally, however, she set down her hoe. “You must promise me never to tell your uncle nothing you hear from me. He’d know in a second where you learned it, because Soter doesn’t know a thing about Leandra’s life on this island. Gousier never told him nothin’, neither.”
    “I promise,” she swore.
    “You are so like her, you know that. More each day, to my eye. When I promised your uncle never to speak on your mother, it was when you was so tiny, and it seemed right then not to have you burdened with what we knew. Your uncle said he didn’t want you growing up like her. That seemed good wisdom then. But you are her daughter—and no one who knew her could ever mistake it.
    “Your mother thought the ocean belonged to her, same as you—that lagoon especially, same as you. It was hers. Oh, you didn’t think anyone knew?” She smiled with tenderness through her exasperation then. “Dear heart, I keep track of you far more’n you realize. I know perfectly well that you lie about nude in the sand over past them dunes. Just like your mother did.”
    A thrill ran through Leodora at the thought of her mother lying in that very same spot, seeing the same sky. The pleasure was followed a moment later by the realization that her private spot was no longer private. Like everything else, she shared it.
    “The man you saw, he’d be an Omelune,” said Dymphana, as though that explained everything. “I expect he thought you were your mother.”
    “Everyone calls her a witch. Everyone in Tenikemac. Uncle Gousier. Even Soter. He calls her the Red Witch.”
    “Oh, does he now? To you he says this? That old fool. He has no right to talk on her at all, even if he does know such things as we don’t.”
    “Well, at least he doesn’t
lie,
” she snapped, and for a moment she thought her aunt was going to weep.
    Instead, her expression still pinched, Dymphana explained, “
Red Witch
is a name from the spans. No one ever called her that here. To be sure, the Omelunes called her worse. I always wondered if she adopted the name on purpose to mock Bouyan. Thumbin’ her nose at everything. That’d be like her.”
    “What are Omelunes?”
    Dymphana took her by the hand. “Come here and let me sit.” They walked over and sat on a broad stump in the shade. The breeze on her wet clothes quickly chilled Leodora, and she scooted off the stump and onto the ground, where she could face her aunt from within a warm patch of sunlight.
    “You understand that I was no part of the household in her younger days. I didn’t meet your uncle till perhaps two years before she’d gone. She would have been a few years older than you are now when I arrived. Whenever I look on you, I can’t help seeing her like she’s a ghost right inside your skin. I’ve almost called you by her name more than once. You have so much of her—her body, her face. Your uncle sees it, too. I know he does. Even your stubbornness is your mother’s, although I’m inclined to think that being stubborn just runs in your family. For that brief while after I came, it was we two women and your grandmother living together in a small wood house all day long—it was smaller then. Your