Realm of the Malach

Chapter 4: The Death of Elizabeth Pickett

Haigan's entourage meandered through the winding roads of Biltmore Estate. Changed by time and its new life as the show and tell of a bygone era, she barely recognized the place she had once known like the back of her hand. The garden was reduced to a shame of its original size and glory. The vineyard and the village with its restaurants and inn - all propitious endeavors after her time. Even the stables were converted into trinket stores and the horse stalls made lovely seating booths for diners in the eatery. So many things to remember and even more memories to forget. Haigan resisted the compulsion to roll the window down and breathe in the air, refused herself to be transported to a time when life was simple and happy and she was someone very, very different. Best to keep distance. She closed her eyes attempting to disorient herself as they drove through the premises and wound behind the greenhouse. She lost her bearing briefly along the river, until they came to a fork in the road that forced them along a hillside patch she had known and loved the most. The grove of oaks used to stand on the western slope of the hill. In the sweltering Carolina summers, a breeze coming off the river always blew through the oak grove, carrying the cool of the sweet water while everywhere else was - as Mrs. Garrity used to say - still as a dead man. When the smarter cows of the herd went missing, the cowhands knew where to find them idly loitering between the trees, seeking respite from the oppressive heat. Haigan's eyes flew open to the now unruly hillside where the once formidable trees stood dead in varying stages of decay, trunks and branches gnarled from disease and age. It was such a strange and grotesque sight that it had become a stop on the Biltmore grounds tour. At the top of the hill was the hollowed out stump of a large oak tree whose dismembered limbs had been worn down decades before by her clambering hands and feet. How long ago it all seemed and, yet, how present it remained in her mind, forever etched by a chisel in stone. A time when she was Elizabeth and she lived on this very land with her Father.

Plagued by grief at the loss of his wife, Elizabeth's father clung to her as though his very life depended on it. Wherever he was, she was sure to be nearby. It never mattered to her that she was devoid of a Mother. As far as she was concerned, her Father was adept at anything a Mother was. At her Father's side, Ellie learned her living as a farmer and became a particularly skilled fisher. She earned the respect of the hands by working twice as hard as they did, but the respect of her peers proved more elusive. Whether from envy or spite, she sowed nothing but contempt from the women who ignored or harassed her. Elizabeth resigned herself to a solitary life and often retreated to the oak grove where she escaped the intrigues and intricacies of Biltmore's self-contained community. Since being able to walk, Ellie had been drawn to the oak grove. On the rare days when work finished early, she and her Father would bring scrap slices of bread and meat gristle they negotiated from the kitchen and sit under the brawny oak tree at the top of the hill eating, drinking and reading, holding on to the last rays of the sun. Other times when her Father was in a babble, he would expound on detailed explanations of ecology and of the animals and plants they worked during the day. Ellie listened to the sound of his voice the way she did to the spring peeper frogs and cicadas. It was the background noise of her childhood that soothed her to sleep like a lullaby. Only as an adult would she finally wonder how it was that her Father was so full of knowledge. While others on the farm could barely write their name, Ellie's Father could read, write and had an answer for everything so convincing that she never doubted their truth. On nights of the new moon when the sky was darkest, Ellie's Father would rouse her from sleep and they would make the trek up the hill to watch the stars fall from the sky.

"Papa," she asked on one such night when she was nine, "is it true that an angel gets its wings every time a shooting star appears?" The leaves of the oak tree - their oak tree - stirred in the gentle wind sounding like cascading water.