CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
On a hilltop clearing in the West Virginia mountains, the old woman sat.
Her deeply wrinkled face was pinched in concentration as her closed eyes squeezed shut even tighter. She had almost a pained looked to her pale face. Her small feet dangled inches above the ground, and her body, so bent with years that she seemed to almost have collapsed into herself, leaned to one side of her rough-hewn rustic chair. The few wispy threads of thin white hair that still clung to her head swayed in the breeze. One bony hand clutched the black woolen shawl she wore as the other cradled her forehead.
She sat with a group of women encircling a crackling fire, all of whom had their eyes closed as the smoke swirled around them, the air thick with the tangy odor of burning wood. Their sha
