The Hollow

5

It was very dark, and Captain Walker held the lantern with his right hand and cradled her hand in the crook of his left elbow. He was very tall, and walking so close to him, Mahala felt conflicted. Safe in his size and intimidated. They took the wooded path over the ridge.

"It seems like a lifetime ago that I walked this trail," he said softly.

The light from the lantern scanned the ground before them, the dark, hard packed soil and rock of the trail. As they ascended up to the low gap, he took her hand and helped her along.

"May I ask you a personal question, Miss Hiner?" he said, helping her up a natural stone step.

Mahala turned to look back at him, her face softening. She could not help but feel that fluttering in her belly that he was speaking to her, holding her gloved hand.

"Of course, Captain Walker..."

"Frederick would be better, I'm not a Captain anymore..."

In the dark, she was glad she could hide her blush.

"Of course, Frederick...?"

They trekked to the low gap, and pausing there, looked down to the resort in the hollow below them. The house was lit, as were the dozen cabins, and the service halls and dormitory for the hired help, both white and black. Compared to the hollow of Hiner Home, Warm Springs seemed far more civilized.

"Your talents, do they consider you a healer?" he said motioning to the resort.

Mahala paused and sat on a rock shelf, reaching down to adjust her boot in the near darkness.

"In a manner of speaking."

Captain Walker moved the lantern and studied her in the light before turning it away. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her. It would be easy to learn, if only she slipped her gloves off.

"I feel foolish, to be honest, Miss Hiner. We have been neighbors for our entire childhoods, but..."

"You have no clear recollection of me?" she supplied.

His shoulders hunched, changing the shape of his silhouette in the near dark. "I feel as if I was made to forget... I thought of this place often. And Emilia mentioned you only in passing in her letters, but until you sent your own letter, I felt as if..." he trailed, his deep voice falling to almost an introspective whisper. "I hope you'll forgive me."

Mahala smirked in the dark and stood slowly. "I can, I do. It...It is part of who I am. I do not necessarily want people to notice me, Captain. My sister was outgoing, memorable...I was, am not. And perhaps that is for the best."

"Why-why is that?" Captain Walker asked taking her hand again as they began down the trail toward the torches and lanterns of the resort.

Mahala did not answer immediately, and Captain Walker slowed his pace.

"My talents, as my father calls them, are...are a burden. The child I am about to see...she is afflicted with an illness that the local doctor cannot and will not admit to be real. She has night terrors, and, she is only one of many people who have come here looking for relief...thanks in part to word-of-mouth. The waters are not why they are here..."

Captain Walker paused before they crossed onto the lawn of the house. Mahala's hand slipped from the crook of his arm, and she blinked at him as he stared down at her, his eyes like black stones in his pale face. When she blinked again, the color of his eyes seemed to change as he looked over at the torches outside the house.

"Your mother was a medium, if I recall..."

Mahala pursed her lips and looked to the house as well. "Again, in a manner of speaking. But I do not have what she had... I cannot speak with the dead or see into the future, I cannot scry into a crystal and divine anything. I can only 'read' into things, into people, by touch. A guest called it 'psychometry', but mother called it a 'talent'. And for a time, when I was very young, I would help her during her sessions with clients until she realized how harmful it was for a child to know so much about the world and its horrors so early..."