Shining Moon Rises Read online

  Shining Moon Rises

  by Stephy Smith

  Published by Astraea Press

  www.astraeapress.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.

  SHINING MOON RISES

  Copyright © 2013 STEPHY SMITH

  ISBN 978-1-62135-131-3

  Cover Art Designed by For the Muse Designs

  To God, for the loving kindness, creativeness and many hours dedicated to craft my writing. Thank you to my family for the encouragement to continue. Many thanks go out to the mental health care professionals who provide services for those in need. And to Astraea Press and staff for your time and patience, I deeply express my appreciation to all. Thank you!

  Chapter One

  1859, Indian Territory, Kansas

  Day One

  Sarah Eastin shivered as the voice near her ear whispered, "Mangy rascals."

  It was one of her mother's favorite sayings. Since her mother had passed, Sarah knew it was her mind playing tricks on her. She rose from the rocking chair on the front porch and waited for the occupants to climb down from a carriage.

  The late winter afternoon sun was losing its heat. The blue sky took on a grayish hue. The barren west Kansas prairie lost some of its golden color. Green grass didn't last long when the summer droughts moved into the area.

  Her sisters, Carolyn Brown and Liz Johnson, along with her brother, Will Burgess, had arrived for the funeral. They all three turned and started walking toward her cabin. Sarah held out her arms to embrace them. Each one passed by as if they hadn't even seen her. She turned and walked to the doorway.

  The rough-hewn logs of the two cabins and the barn stood out on the plains. With the loss of the leaves on trees she had planted years ago, the farm resembled an abandoned homestead in the middle of a wide-open range. The winters were cold and the summers hot. Spring rains were nice but never enough. Falls brought wild birds flying south for the winter.

  "How was your trip out here?" Sarah stared at the three as they made themselves at home. One of her sisters would complain if she questioned how their train ride from Fort Leavenworth to Fort Larned fared. From Fort Larned they would take the stage to Eagle Glenn where her siblings had to rent a carriage to travel the five miles south.

  "It was dreadful, Sarah. The roads were rough, as always." Carolyn turned her head and glared at Sarah. Carolyn's blue eyes had lost their sheen and her reddish-blonde hair had more gray than Sarah remembered. The fair-skinned face of forty-nine-year-old Carolyn was worn and wrinkled. George, Carolyn's husband, never attended any of the family affairs. Most of the time, Carolyn stayed at their home in Fort Leavenworth with him.

  "You know we don't like coming out here. Now, what do you plan on doing with Mother's things?" Liz's voice was harsh. Her brown eyes dulled with anger. A long brown strand of hair fell across her cheek as she unpinned her hat and removed it. Sarah held back a gasp as she looked upon the weathered face and thinly tightened lips. At forty-seven, Liz carried a few pounds more than her older sister. Harvey, Liz's husband, had died eleven years back. Sarah wondered if he had been hounded to death by her youngest sister.

  "I say burn them. Her cabin too! What have you fixed us to eat?" Will tossed his coat over the back of a chair. He pulled off his dusty top hat to reveal his dirty blond hair. It swept across his forehead, over his bushy eyebrows, and covered his lifeless blue eyes. His weathered face was long and thin. At forty-five years of age, he looked closer to seventy than fifty.

  "I—" Sarah clenched her fingers in the material of her skirt. She bit her lip to keep from protesting when her words were cut off by Carolyn.

  "And the way you are dressed, really Sarah, one would think you cared for the old woman." Carolyn waved her hand in front of her face.

  Sarah could feel her blood pulsing through her veins. She clamped her mouth shut.

  "There's firewood by the stove and soup in the pot. Help yourselves to it." Sarah's fingernails dug into the palms of her clenched hands.

  "Aren't you going to bring our bags in?" Liz whirled around.

  "While you're at it, unhitch the team from the carriage and feed them." Will propped his feet on the table.

  "I want to see Mother's will." Liz turned to Carolyn. "I hope Sarah doesn't embarrass us by wearing that hideous black dress to the funeral."

  "That is the custom, Liz. You did come for the funeral, didn't you? What did you do with your copy of the will? I know you each have one." Sarah narrowed her eyes at her siblings. She tried to hide her disgust from her voice.

  "Of course we came for the funeral. Now be a dear and go get our bags from the carriage." Carolyn said.

  "I have things to do." Sarah twirled around and marched to the greenhouse garden attached to the side of her house. Jessie Cole Eastin, her oldest son, had constructed the greenhouse for Sarah's herbs on her fiftieth birthday. She thought back on the windy day he chose to finish it. His blond hair was cut short and the breeze had it standing up on his head. The determination to conclude the project sparkled in his blue eyes. The thirty-one-year-old man had acted more like an eleven-year-old, as he danced around the glass structure when he was done.

  Cordell Emmett Eastin, Sarah's middle son, had brought her a variety of seeds. He had turned the soil with a shovel. Sweat had poured off his forehead as he dug. The heat in the greenhouse was unbearable. His dark brown hair had drawn more heat upon his head. As he had worked beside his mother, he never lost the shine in his deep brown eyes. Taller than his brothers, he had to slump his shoulders to keep from hitting his head on the overhead beams. At twenty-eight, he was lean and full of mischief when he was around Jessie and Travis.

  The youngest, Travis Graton Eastin, had also joined in the celebration of Sarah's fiftieth birthday. Travis had taken out the window between the house and the greenhouse for warmth in the winter. He was a shorter version of Jessie but had a more solid build. His blond hair was cut short. Bright blue eyes warmed the hearts of everyone around him. For a twenty-five-year-old man, he was energetic and had high expectations of where he wanted to be in ten years.

  Sarah looked forward to their arrival for the funeral. Even though each of them were five miles away — Jessie to the east, Cord to the south, and Travis to the west — she hadn't spent much time with them after her mother got worse. The voices from inside the cabin drew her attention back to her three siblings.

  She dropped to her knees and grabbed a handful of weeds. With a strong tug, she yanked them free of the soil. It had been a few days since she tended to the patch of herbs in the small plot. The window above the garden was open, and she listened to the conversation inside. Sarah slung the weeds aside. Not one of her siblings had requested to see their mother's body. It wouldn't take much effort for them to walk to the tiny cabin to see her. One would think that, after not seeing one’s mother for five years, they would at least have the decency to look upon the frail face of the seventy-two-year-old woman who brought them into this world. Sarah had displayed her mother on the kitchen table in Mrs. Burgess's own cabin because that was what her mother wanted.

  "Sarah hasn't changed one bit. She is still the most ungrateful person I have ever had the displeasure of knowing!" Liz then let out an eerie cackle.

  "As soon as we get our money, we can leave and never se
e that unappreciative sister of ours again," Will said. "We've done all we could to help her. I don't understand why she didn't just let mother die and be done with it years ago."

  Sarah's heart pounded with fury. She couldn't wait for the three to get their money and leave her peaceful home. Sarah remembered that the three siblings had been out doing secret things by the time they were teenagers. They had even refused to go to church with their parents. She wouldn't join their evil-hearted coven of witches, and ever since then they had treated her as if she were a flea on the family dog. It all seemed petty now. At least she was respectful and loved both her mother and father. Carolyn, Liz, and Will never gave a care about anyone but themselves.

  She could hear her mother's soothing words in her mind, "Turn the other cheek, Sarah. They will be gone in a few days." But she didn't want to turn the other cheek. She wanted nothing more than to make them leave. Since it was their mother's funeral, she tried to swallow her anger. The next few days were going to be the worst trial she could ever imagine.

  The best thing she could do under the circumstances was to avoid them until they left. How could she do that with them under her roof? She sat back on her heels. Clamping onto another handful, she pulled more weeds free of the ground and then tossed them aside. If only her sisters and brother were as easy to get rid of, her life would be so much better.

  There would be others around in the morning. With their presence, her siblings would act civil. Once everyone was gone, Sarah would be alone again in her sorrow. The scrapes of furniture moving across the floor pulled her out of her thoughts. She rose and crept to the window.

  "This place is awful. Look at all this… primitive furniture. Only Sarah and Mother would live like this." Liz's voice was colder than usual.

  "We can fix that," Carolyn said in the same tone as Liz.

  "Whatever you're planning, count me in, sisters. Right now I suppose I'll put the team in the barn and bring in our bags, since our ungrateful hostess seems to have forgotten we're guests." Will left the cabin.

  Sarah peeked around the corner and steadied her nerves. She walked to the door and entered her house. With her head held high, she headed to her bedroom and shut the door behind her.

  For a while, she listened to the murmurs and mumbles of her siblings. Carolyn's voice elevated. "Liz, if you would have waited to cast your love spell on Matthew, Will and I could have helped you! None of us wanted to see him marry Sarah."

  "You made it worse when you tried to reverse it! He acted happy to marry her. It was disgusting to watch them together. I was almost convinced they were happy together." Liz yelled.

  "Both of you did damage. If you would've left well enough alone, he would have stayed away from Sarah. Instead, y'all pushed him further into her grasp. They were happy together." Sarah flinched when she heard a loud thud of something being dropped on the floor as Will spoke.

  "We have to get Mother's book of spells. Although, I doubt any of them will serve our purpose." Liz lowered her voice.

  "We need to convince Sarah to burn Mother's cabin and the cemetery. Once that is done, our spirit friends will have free reign of this place and we can destroy the book. We need to keep up the ruse of not wanting the land. Then after Sarah is gone, we can hold our meetings out here without being detected." Will said.

  "Sarah doesn't need to know we want the land for the coven." Carolyn lowered her voice.

  They can never convince me to burn Mother's cabin or the cemetery. If they want to keep up their ruse, I'll play along. But they will never get the land for their wicked coven. Sarah sat on the edge of the bed. Liz put a love spell on my husband. She should've known you cannot make someone love you against their will. They must have read Mother's book, without reading the warning. Then Carolyn tried to reverse it? Liz was in love with Matthew, and he is long gone from her evil grasp. He never cared for her anyway.

  Sarah covered her mouth with her pillow to muffle her giggles. The thought of Liz thinking Matthew would ever care an iota about her was absurd. Now they wanted the land to conduct their gruesome rituals. Never. They hadn't said a word before about wanting the land. Not to her, anyway. What had the dark coven they joined been up to? Why would they want this place when they littered the streets of Fort Leavenworth with their own kind? She closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

  ****

  Day Two

  The grayness of the morning matched Sarah's mood. She swallowed the sobs threatening to escape. In a few hours, her mother would rest beside her father on the hill. Sarah would miss her, but she knew it had been her mother's time to go.

  She dipped her cloth in the water basin on the chest of drawers. The cold water bit into her skin as she wiped the grime from her face, neck, and arms. Then she pulled a black dress and veil from her armoire and slipped into it. Sarah twisted her hair into a bun on top of her head. The creaks of a wagon stopped in front of her house. Hurriedly, she went to the front door and stepped out on the porch.

  Six men dressed in black suits followed her and entered the empty, quiet, dead cabin. Her mother's body lay on the kitchen table for viewing. The dwelling was cold and dark in the one room log cabin of Mrs. Burgess where she was in state. The men moved the coffin to the wagon waiting outside to make the short trip up the hill.

  Townspeople had parked their wagons and tied their horses at the bottom of the hill. They milled around and shook hands with one another as they waited for the family. Jessie, Cord, and Travis pulled their wagon to a stop near the barn.

  Sarah ran to them and pulled them into her as she sobbed into each one of their chest. She shuddered at the sound of her brother as his hateful words echoed for all to hear. "Let's get the old hag in the ground so we can get back to Fort Leavenworth. I'd hate to be stuck here due to the weather."

  Jessie took a step toward Will, but Sarah placed her hand on his chest. "Leave it be. They'll be gone soon," she whispered to her sons. One last glance at her mother's cabin, and she nodded that she was ready for the walk to the cemetery.

  It would be the first time in five years she had been alone. There would be no more "when did, who was" or the call of "help me" echoing through the shuttered windows of the tiny home.

  Sarah could feel the needle pricks on her legs as the cold air swirled, trapped inside her long dress. Tears froze on her cheeks and made her jaws unmovable. She dabbed at her eyes with the white handkerchief she held in her hand. Her lips quivered as she repressed the need to scream out her pain and anguish.

  The drizzling rain stabbed the faces of family and friends in the funeral procession, as they slowly walked behind the death wagon to the small family cemetery on the hill. Sarah and her sisters' veils were covered in tiny slivers of ice. She shivered as she thought of how little her siblings thought of their mother.

  Carolyn, Liz, and Will stood outside the cemetery fence. Sarah asked them to join her at their mother's grave side, but they had refused. Their disrespect drew the attention of all in attendance.

  Overbearing numbness wrapped around Sarah as the men lowered the plain pine box containing her mother into the cold, dark ground. She remembered this process well when her father, her husband, and other relatives had died. The words spoken over the grave sunk into the hollow hole as the coffin descended. She knew she would give way to the heartache after the other mourners left.

  The service was brief due to the blustery weather. The townspeople shared their grief. One by one, neighbors trickled down the hill to wagons and scattered in all directions for their own homes. Higher up on the hill stood the lone Indian who came to pay his respects to her and her family.

  The breath caught in her lungs as she gazed upon the magnificence of Shining Moon's solid form. His long, black braids peppered with gray now hung in front of his shoulders as he watched from afar. For a short time he held his arms straight out from his sides. A feather clutched in one hand and a tied parcel of herbs in the other. His face turned up to the sky.

  Sarah knew he was prayi
ng for her mother's spirit the way he did at Mrs. Burgess's passing. Her heart beat wildly. He had pulled Sarah against him and let her cry when her mother died. Shining Moon had taught her many things, but more importantly, he had brought happiness to her mother in her final days. He had helped them both prepare for that dreaded day when they would say their final good-bye to one another.

  Despite the cold, she warmed inside, just knowing he was near. Sarah wanted nothing more than to be wrapped in his strong arms, pulled against his massive chest, and to feel the heat coursing through her veins at his nearness. She closed her eyes and lingered on the memory of the way spices and animal skin radiated from his being.

  He was a shaman for his people. For several years, he had administered to her mother. His presence had always been welcome at both of the cabins.

  Sarah stilled her desire to run to him and throw herself into his arms. She gazed at him for a few minutes, knowing he wouldn't leave his post until she was in her home. Shining Moon would come to her when he felt it was safe, without causing a scandal.

  She was pleased at the number of townspeople who had attended the event. They made their way toward their wagons after kind words of reminiscing about Mrs. Burgess and what an impact she had made on their lives. Sarah's heart shrank. It was one more affirmation that her mother wouldn't be coming down from the cemetery with her. Even though her sons hadn't left her side, she knew they needed to get back to their own lives on their own farms. She let out deep sigh.

  Alone with her sons, she made her way down the hill to her own cabin. Her chest cinched. Sarah didn't want her sons to go. She glanced at her cabin as the mumbled voices of her brother and sisters emanated from inside. A shudder ran down her spine.

  Bidding her sons farewell, she took a deep breath before she entered. The long room, containing the kitchen on one end and the sitting room on the other, was modestly furnished. A table separated the two areas. At the backside of the room, two bedrooms hid behind the long wall. The window over-looking her greenhouse garden was near the fireplace at the end of the long room.