The Seam Sorceress

Hearth and Home, part 1.

Tilly didn't know where they were going, but she knew it was over the mountain. She drove the truck until the engine clacked from lack of fuel and the brake felt soft beneath her foot. They coasted while they could, and when that ran out, she left the thing in a ditch. The trunk was too heavy to take along in its entirety, so Tilly took the things she thought were most important: Granny's pattern book and sewing kit, the mercantile sundries, then at last the tattered remnants of her denim jumper. She wrapped it all in the unfinished quilt for the MacGregor baby and tied it into a bindle.

"That was some ride," Booger said as she hopped out of the cab.

"It was." Tilly picked up a long twig on the side of the road. It reminded her of the switches Mama made her pick out when she and Sprout were younger and more apt to misbehave—partly because it had a good bend to it, but mostly because it fell apart to useless splinters the moment any real force was put behind it. She frowned as it cracked under the weight of the bindle. "Went a lot farther than I thought we would."

"Me too. I—" Booger stopped suddenly with her ears perked. She ran ahead of the truck and barked at the empty road.

"Something wrong?" Tilly clutched the next stick, a pine branch, a little tighter.

"Thought I heard something," the dog answered as she circled back. "But I was saying—I can turn into a horse and get us to the next town, if you want."

The pine proved to be too springy, with the bindle bobbing like some bait at the end of a lure. Tilly shook her head and threw that stick into the undergrowth as well. "Probably for the best."

"Provided they don't catch us first." Booger gave a glance to the way they'd come. "I don't know if I can outrun one of these wheely things if they took a notion to bring one after us."

"This is a truck," Tilly explained. "And I'd rather you not even try. Fact is, they're gonna catch us sooner or later, but that's all right. Don't intend on running forever. Just long enough to get the rest of the things for Mama's dress, and that means going to Opaline."

"The capitol?" Booger tilted her head. "What's in the capitol?"

"I don't know," Tilly admitted. "But GP said pert-near everything can be bought and sold there."

"You're gonna take the word of that two-faced sidewinder after all this?" Booger barked.

"I know, I know," the girl sighed. She stood on tiptoe and stretched towards a sagging tree limb, but it just evaded her grip. "But I'm running out of options, and I have to try."

"Well, all right then." Booger gave a snuffle of finality. A moment later, she got a running start and jumped the ditch. Her nails dug into the soft earth as she pawed her way up the bank and into the woods proper.

"Where you going?" Tilly called.

"Not going nowhere." Booger's tail was the only thing visible above the brush and thick carpet of dead leaves from several winters past. "I'm doing a thing."

Tilly crossed her arms and pivoted on a heel. A grin eked its way out of her mock indignation. "If you needed to relieve yourself you coulda just said so. I wouldn't have looked."

"You think you're being funny but I'd actually kinda prefer if you did watch while I was doing my business," Booger countered.

"Ew. That's nasty."

"Aw, c'mon. Don't taking a leak make you feel kinda vulnerable? Some big mean critter could sneak up on you and you wouldn't be able to get away in time."

"I..." Tilly brought a hand to her mouth. "I never really thought about it before."

"Of course you ain't," the dog snapped. "You got a whole little room out back to do it in. Feel so comfortable doing it that you take them seed catalogs in to read with you."