Nearly every young man in Bear Hollow courted Grace Whitacker, with her corn-yellow hair and blue eyes. When she married Jimmy Jackson in June of 1941 and went to live in Croker Gap, most of the single girls wished her well and were glad she was gone. But nobody was happier than my best friend, Ruby Miller. She sat next to me at the wedding, sneaking peeks at my brother Seth, and she caught the bouquet when Grace threw it.

“Seth and me, we’ll be the next married, Anna May, you watch,” she told me when we were walking home.

“It’s no good if you magic him into it,” I said. “You gotta play fair, Ruby. Who wants a man you had to spell to love you?”

“Lots of girls do,” she said,” Rose Perkins, for one.” Word was that Rose had got a charm from Ruby’s grandmother to make Bud Perkins fall in love with her.

Ruby’s Gran was the witch of Bear Hollow, and folk went to her for charms and cures. Ruby was learning witching from her. She looked witchy, too, in a pretty way, all black wavy hair and big, green eyes and pale skin. It beat me why all the men trailed around Grace’s skirts; Ruby was prettier by a long shot.

“We’ll make a true-love knot in a tree,” she said, “and it’ll never, ever come undone.”

“Ruby Miller, if you magic my brother, I’ll never speak to you again!”

She waved the bouquet.

“I won’t need no magic,” she said, “I’ve got this. Catching the bouquet is a powerful omen.”

Whether it was that or something else, by the end of July Seth was walking out with Ruby. He took her to dances and walked her home afterwards to where she lived with her grandmother, halfway up the mountain from the hollow.

In September she told me that they’d twined two branches of a young sassafras tree together into a true-love knot, somewhere on the mountain above her cabin.

*          *          *

In December we heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Almost all the young men from Bear Hollow enlisted.

I cried when they left, but Ruby’s eyes were dry.

“Every girl with a sweetheart ‘listed came up to Gran for a charm to keep him safe. I made Seth’s myself,” she told me. “He’ll be back safe and sound.”

“You can’t know that,” I said.

Ruby took my hands in hers.

“Anna May Dowd,” she said, “I swear to you that Seth will be home. My charms always work.”

That spring I started learning midwifery from Bud’s Aunt Sarah. She taught me what plants to use for poultices and teas, how to set a bone and cure a fever, and how to turn a baby when it wouldn’t come the right way ’round.

Ruby’s Gran took pneumonia after Christmas of ’44, and Ruby didn’t come down from their cabin so much after that. She nursed the old lady and took over most of the witching. I visited as often as I could.

“Come down to our place,” I said to her Gran, the last time I visited. “Seth’s room is empty, and I could help Ruby nurse you. You’d be welcome.”

“I was born here, and I’m gonna die here,” she answered. “I’m not afraid to die. I’ve taught Ruby all I know, and there’s nothing more she can learn but what wisdom will teach her.”

“Gran, you’re not dying just yet,” Ruby said. But her grandmother only smiled.

“You don’t tell a witch when she’s dyin’ or not dyin’,” she said. “And when this is your place, Ruby, and you’re the witch here, you mind you don’t let spite turn you.”

“Nothing’s going to make me spiteful,” Ruby said. She kissed her grandmother’s cheek. “I’m going to get some ham in from the smokehouse for supper. You like a nice piece of ham.”

After she left, her grandmother gripped my arm.

“Ruby’s ma was a Gately,” she told me. “All the Gately women have a powerful spiteful streak. She’s happy now, thinking of Seth coming back to marry her, but you mind me, Anna May. There’s spite in that girl, and I’m not going to be around to cool her down. I’m counting on you to do it.”

“I’ll do my best, Gran Miller.”

That was the last time I spoke to Gran Miller. She died a week later. After the burial, I asked Ruby if she wanted to live with me and my parents, but she just shook her head.

“I’m fine up there,” she said. “It’s my home. Anyway, when Seth comes back I won’t be alone any more.”

“Ruby, lots of things can happen in a war.”

“My charms always work, Anna May. And our true-love knot is still done up. He’ll be coming home to me.”

*          *          *

Seth came home just after New Year’s of 1946. He limped and was thin, and looked more than three years older, but he talked and laughed like himself. As soon as could tear himself away from Mother, he went up to Ruby’s place and brought her down for supper.

“Look at this!” he said. He hauled the right leg of his pants up above his knee and showed us the hollow in his calf.

“I carried that charm in my pocket all through everything,” he said, “and when a grenade took out the guy near me, the charm turned the shrapnel. The doctor said it just missed the vein. He said I musta had an angel looking out for me. I told him I did.”

He kissed Ruby right in front of us all.

“I’ll speak to the preacher about the banns,” he said, and Ruby looked happier than I’ve ever seen her.

The next week, Grace Jackson came back to live with her folks. Jimmy had enlisted, too, but Jimmy hadn’t had a charm to keep him safe. A few weeks after Grace turned up in the Hollow, Seth started going out of his road to stop by her folks’ house on his way up to see Ruby.

“Why did Grace have to come back?” Ruby fretted to me, “She got the man she chose – why can’t she leave mine alone?”

“Seth told me he and Jimmy served together,” I said, “and that they’d promised to look in on each other’s family if  – ”

Ruby snorted.

“Can you see Jimmy Jackson coming from Croker Gap to see you and your folks, or me?  They never served together; Seth’s making it up.”

“Why would he lie, Ruby?”

“Because he hasn’t gotten around to telling the truth yet,” she said.

“What about your true-love knot?” I asked. The look on her face made me remember Gran Miller saying, “All the Gately women have a spiteful streak,” and a shiver went up my back.

The next night Seth went up to see Ruby for the last time. A week later he and Grace were walking out. That was the end of March. The banns were cried in April, and they married on the fifth of June. They rented a little farm a mile or so from ours.

Ruby didn’t come down for the wedding. Whenever I tried to visit her, she sent me away.

“I know it’s not your fault, Anna May,” she said the last time, “but seeing you reminds me of Seth. I can’t bear it. When I’m done grieving, I’ll come see you.”

She never came. In the middle of July Sarah Perkins went up to visit her and found her dead in her gran’s rocker by the stove, dried blood all over the floor and through the door. It looked like she’d cut her leg splitting kindling and got herself inside to die.

I went up with the other women to lay her out. She looked peaceful, and deathly white from the bleeding. Everybody in the Hollow came to the funeral, and almost all of them told Seth not to blame himself. He couldn’t help it that he fell back in love with Grace; it was just Ruby’s bad luck that Jimmy had died and Grace had come home. But my brother looked pale and drawn, and Grace was red-eyed and clung to his arm. They took Ruby’s death hardest of anyone.

Then Grace found out she was pregnant..

“If it’s a girl, we’re going to name her Ruby,” she said to me. I didn’t know if that was such a good idea, but I said nothing. I kept an eye on Grace in case she had any trouble carrying, but she did fine.

One evening at the end of April Seth rode up to the door on his mule.

“Anna May, Grace is having the baby,” he said. He turned his hat in his hands like a schoolboy talking to a girl for the first time. I got my bag and came out, sitting behind Seth and feeling that mule’s spine with every bounce.

I sent Seth out to chop wood and heat water, as much to keep him out of the way as anything.

Grace laboured all evening and ‘way into the night. Sometime between midnight and dawn I began to worry. She was pushing hard, and I could see the baby’s head, but it wasn’t moving, and I couldn’t tell the reason. It was turned right, and there was lots of room for it to come out, but I couldn’t coax it along.

Then, just for a second, I felt like Ruby was in the room, and a cold knot formed under my heart.

“I need to talk to Seth for a minute,” I said to Grace. “I’ll be right back to catch this baby.”

“Am I dying, Anna May? Are you sending Seth for the preacher?” Grace asked. Her voice rasped; she’d cried out with every push, and she’d been pushing a long time.

“No, no – you’re not dying,” I said. “I’ll be back.” I wiped my hands on my apron and went out to the kitchen.

Seth sprang out of his chair.

“What is it?” he cried, “Is Grace – ?”

“Seth Dowd, you keep your voice down. I need you to do something to get this baby born, and I need you to do it quick and quiet. You understand?”

He nodded.

“What do I do?”

“I think Ruby might have done some witchery on Grace before she died. You have to find it. D’you know where she’d put something like that? If she did it?”

His eyes flicked sideways, and he bit his lip.

“Yeah, I think I do. I can look.”

“Good. You look, and bring back whatever you find. And, Seth, you don’t take anything else! You hear me?”

“I hear you.” He ran to the barn for the mule, faster than I’d ever seen him move.

After that there wasn’t a lot to do but encourage Grace and try to keep her spirits up. I rubbed her back and talked about the baby, but with every pain her grip on my hand ground the bones of my fingers together, and I knew she didn’t believe she’d live to see her child.

It took Seth almost two hours to get back.  It was harder and harder to act calm for Grace. She kept pushing, weaker all the time, and that baby just wouldn’t budge.

Finally I heard the door and ran out to the kitchen. Seth stood there, holding a little bundle wrapped in a cloth.

“It was up by the tree. That’s why I was so long,” he said. I didn’t know what he meant at first, then I remembered the true-love knot in the sassafras tree.

“I didn’t look at it,” he said. I turned my back to him and unwrapped the cloth.

The doll had hair of yellow cornsilk and big, blue buttons for eyes. It had a big round belly, with a hatpin shoved right through below the navel.

“Oh, Ruby,” I whispered. I said a prayer and pulled the pin out. I threw both the doll and pin into the stove and went back into the bedroom.

“Push, now,” I said to Grace.

“I can’t. I’m so tired.”

“One more push, that’s all. Come on, Grace, just this one, I promise.”

She pushed, and that baby slid out like he was greased, and the afterbirth came right behind him.

“It’s a boy,” I said to Grace. “I hope you have a name for a boy.”

In half an hour I had her all cleaned up and settled, and called Seth in to see her and the baby. I went out to the kitchen and sat before the stove. After a while Seth came out and sat beside me.

“She’s asleep,” he said. “She would have died if you hadn’t sent me out for that thing, wouldn’t she.”

I didn’t answer that.

“Tell me what happened,” I said instead.

“It was just lying at the base of the tree, almost like she wanted me to find it. Like she thought I’d maybe come up there after and know what she’d done. What was it, Anna May?”

“A doll, with a pin through it to keep the baby from coming.”

“Grace wasn’t even pregnant when Ruby died.”

“You think that mattered? She probably fixed that up soon as you got married.” Tears prickled in my eyes. I hadn’t been there to cool Ruby’s spite. I’d let her down.

“There’s something else,” Seth said. “When I picked it up, Ruby – well, she came out of the trees, all pale. She asked me for a kiss goodbye so’s she could rest. She said if I gave her that she’d let me take what I came for, and if I didn’t she’d hinder me until Grace died, and the baby, too.”

“Seth, you didn’t!”

“She said she knew I still loved her, because that knot hadn’t come undone. And I do, Anna May, but I love Grace better.”

“Seth, tell me you didn’t take a kiss from her ghost.”

“I gave her a kiss, Anna May, I didn’t take one.”

“If you kissed her lips, you couldn’t give a kiss without taking one. Seth, please tell me you didn’t kiss her on the lips!”

*          *          *

The baby thrived, but Seth didn’t. He wasted away to nothing and died before Thanksgiving. Grace left right after the funeral to live with an aunt in Tennessee.

I went up to Ruby’s cabin and stayed a whole night there without a fire or light, waiting, but I never saw or heard her. The cabin was never her haunting place; it was that tree that only she and Seth knew of. Somewhere on the mountain is a true-love knot that has never come undone. I think she has what she wanted, that she and Seth are together, wherever they are.

Elizabeth Creith has been a storyteller and visual artist for as long as she can remember. She has made her living as a printmaker and potter, and has written four humor columns. She reads fantasy, folklore, history, paleontology, archaeology, science, poetry and almost anything she can get her hands on about art. She also practices bookmaking (with pages, not ponies), paper engineering, painting and printmaking. Elizabeth lives in a hundred-year-old farmhouse surrounded by roses and forest with her husband, cat, koi and a lot of wildlife. The first two books in her fantasy trilogy, Wings of Valenia, are available HERE. The final book, The Shaman’s Wife, will be released in summer, 2026.