The children of the mountains needed to believe in magic.

So do I, she thought.

She got up from her chair and walked to the kitchen to return the cup she had used for her nightly coffee, and she stood looking out of the window, at the haze of light from the moon and stars.

She thought she could smell honeysuckle, and the sense of it—real or imagined—was as sweet in her mouth as the nectar hummingbirds fed on from the colorful throats of flowers.

She looked at the clock on the kitchen counter. Nearly eleven. After her bedtime. She would be up early, the next day being Sunday. She would be up early because the old woman would be awake early, somehow knowing—by some body clock, by some rhythm of habit that had never become muddled—that it was church day. And though they would not go to church—not with the old woman’s confusion of being among many people—they would play the radio and listen to church music, and if the old woman was thinking clearly, they would hear a sermon by some preacher making the kind of cry that ticket hawkers at carnivals made, and the way he would paint God would be no more than that—God as a sideshow freak, caged in a tent, pacing like a tiger behind steel bars. Yowsir, yowsir, yowsir … Put your dime or your quarter or your dollar in the collection plate and take a peek at God. Won’t believe your eyes, you won’t. One of the great wonders of the world, God was.

And the old woman would listen intently, her head bobbing, her lips making words of praise that had no sound to them.

Maybe she was wrong about all the men who were waiting to call on her, she thought. Knowing about the old woman living with her—knowing the old woman’s reputation for being blunt and mean and knowing how much time the old woman demanded—not many of them would bother to waste their time.

Not many at all.

Taylor Bowers, maybe, but few others.

She left the kitchen and went through the living room to the hallway leading to the bedrooms at the back of the house, paused at the closed door of the old woman’s bedroom, then opened it quietly and peeked inside. The old woman was asleep, her breathing so shallow the movement of her chest was barely visible. Eleanor could see the bandaged hand, a hand cut by a kitchen knife when the old woman imagined she had a potato to peel. The old woman had watched the blood with a curious expression, as though it belonged to someone else. Sometimes she felt as though the old woman were a ninety-pound weight draped over her shoulders, and, later, she would always be depressed over such thoughts.

She closed the door and went to her own bedroom and dressed for bed, wearing only the tops of her pajamas. She stood before the mirror on the dresser, gazing at herself. The woman who gazed back at her no longer had the smile of joy worn by the girl who had been mesmerized by the heat of a man’s eyes. The woman who gazed back at her was tired, had the beginning of crow’s feet at her eyes. Her face appeared pale, carried a sign of surrender. Her hair seemed lifeless. She was in her early thirties. The woman gazing back at her had the hollow look of being ancient.