Now listen close, babies, ’cause the night this all happened, Sugar Holler felt different.
Storm different.
Omen different.
The kind of different where even the trees stand up straighter like they’re waitin’ on news.
Poppy knelt in the dirt, hands shakin’ around that silver fox brooch, the one the stranger left behind like a stone dropped in a still pond. Cypress stood stiff beside her, tail low, muscles pulled tight as bowstrings. Ash hovered close but didn’t touch her — he knew better than to lay a hand on a wild thing already cornered by memory.
Enna Mae stepped out of the shadows of her porch, moonstone eyes bright under that wild red hair. She looked at the brooch, then at Poppy, then toward the dark ridge the stranger had vanished into.
“Child,” Enna Mae said, voice low, “someone just dug up a name you buried deep.”
Poppy swallowed hard.
“Inola,” she whispered.
“My mother’s name for me… before everything burned.”
Enna Mae crouched beside her.
“Honey, names don’t come back on their own. Something — or someone — sent that man.”
Ash frowned, glancing at the ridge. “Who even knows her real name anymore?”
Before Enna Mae could answer, Cypress growled low, the kind of sound that makes the air tighten.
Up on the ridge, a shadow slid between the hemlocks — tall, lean, too fluid to be a deer, too quiet to be a man untrained.
Enna Mae didn’t blink.
Didn’t flinch.
Didn’t stir.
She just tapped the rim of her washtub drum
once.
A warning.
A summons.
A “come out if you got business here.”
The woods held their breath.
Then the shadow stepped into the clearing.
He was tall, shoulders broad but not boastin’, hair braided down his back, clothes dark as the new moon. Around his neck hung a leather cord with a carved stone fox — twin to the brooch in Poppy’s hands.
Poppy gasped.
Ash whispered, “Holy hell…”
Cypress snarled, hackles rising like a storm-tide.
But the man’s eyes?
They weren’t threat.
They were memory.
He bowed his head first to Enna Mae — respect given where it was due — then turned toward Poppy.
And babies…
when he spoke, the whole holler shivered.
“Inola Black Fox… your mother sent me.”
Poppy’s breath snapped.
“My— my mother died in that fire.”
The man’s face softened, old grief etched behind his eyes.
“No, little fox.
Pocahontas Hale did not die.
She vanished so you could live.”
Ash swore under his breath.
Enna Mae closed her eyes, whispered something only the spirits heard.
Poppy clutched the brooch like she needed it to keep her upright.
“She’s alive? My mother is alive?”
The man nodded.
“For now.
“She’s older now — near sixty winters deep —
She’s livin’ out there in the mountains,
quiet but fierce,
still holdin’ the kind of strength
that scares men who did her wrong.
She’s alive…
and she’s callin’ you home.”
Poppy’s lip trembled.
“Why? After all this time?”
The man stepped closer, and for one heartbeat, a panther —
black as river silt —
slipped from the ridge behind him, walked the treeline like a spirit with claws.
Enna Mae’s eyes narrowed.
That panther meant somethin’.
Somethin’ old, sacred, Cherokee.
The man said:
“Because the men who burned your mother’s house
are not done.
And your mother hid somethin’ they want.”
Poppy pressed the brooch to her chest.
“What could she possibly have that matters now?”
The man looked her full in the face, the firelight catching the fox talisman on his chest.
“You, Inola.
She hid you.
And now the ones she ran from
know you’re alive.”
Ash swayed.
“Pop… oh God…”
Cypress barked once — sharp, urgent — staring back toward the ridge like danger had sprouted legs and was climbing up behind them.
The panther melted back into the dark.
The trees rustled like they were warning.
Even the drum at Enna Mae’s feet thrummed once, unbidden.
Poppy’s voice came out small but steady:
“Where is she? Where’s my mother?”
The man hesitated — just long enough to make Enna Mae stiffen.
Then he said:
“Hidden deep in the mountains.
In the place where the Cherokee medicine women
go to live…
or to die.”
The wind rose.
The fire flickered sideways.
Far off, another panther screamed — the kind of scream that ain’t meant for ears but for bones.
Enna Mae stood tall, taller than she’d ever seemed.
“Child,” she said, resting a hand on Poppy’s shoulder,
“the past ain’t a ghost.
It’s a door.
And tonight, it swung wide open.”
The man nodded once.
“Your mother’s waiting, Inola.
But the ones who hunt you?
They ain’t far behind.”
The fire had died down to a bed of red glow and breathin’ coals,
but somehow the night felt brighter —
like the darkness itself was watchin’ with a hungry sort of patience.
Poppy hadn’t moved since the stranger spoke.
She sat there with that silver fox brooch pressed to her chest,
Cypress leanin’ into her side like he could hold her together by sheer want.
Ash dropped into a squat in front of her,
hands braced on his knees.
“Pop,” he whispered,
voice barely holdin’ steady,
“we don’t have to go chasin’ ghosts in the mountains.
You don’t owe the past nothin’.”
But Poppy looked up,
and sugar…
the girl who raised her chin wasn’t Poppy anymore.
It was Inola.
Clear-eyed.
Wounded.
Wild.
And called.
“I owe my mother everything,” she said.
“And if she’s alive… if she’s been alone all this time…”
Her throat tightened.
“She didn’t vanish for herself. She vanished for me.”
Enna Mae stepped forward,
bare feet silent on the pine needles,
and laid a gentle hand on Poppy’s cheek.
“Child,” she murmured,
“some truths don’t wait for you to be ready.
They come when the mountain says it’s time.”
Poppy nodded once,
a little fox discovering its teeth.
The stranger watched her with somethin’ like respect,
or grief,
or maybe both.
He reached into his coat and pulled out a small leather pouch,
tied tight with red thread.
He held it out to her.
“This is from your mother,” he said.
“She told me you’d need it before you reached her.”
Poppy took it,
hands trembling.
“Is it medicine?”
He hesitated.
“No.
It’s a map.”
Ash blinked.
“A map? To where?”
The man’s gaze drifted toward the east ridge —
taller, darker, older than the others —
where the panthers had retreated.
“To the place,” he said,
“where the Cherokee medicine women go
when the world becomes too cruel…
and too dangerous.”
Enna Mae’s eyes sharpened.
“The Sanctuary.”
The stranger nodded.
“You know it.”
Enna Mae’s jaw tightened.
“Only in stories.
Only whispered.
That place ain’t for outsiders.”
Poppy looked between them.
“What’s… what’s in the Sanctuary?”
A breeze swept the clearing,
cold and heavy,
carrying the smell of wet stone and winter.
The stranger answered:
“The truth of your mother’s life.
And the truth of why men set fire to her house.”
Poppy steadied herself.
“And the men who burned it—
they know I’m alive?”
His silence was answer enough.
Ash cursed under his breath.
Cypress growled deep in his chest,
a warning to whatever shadows were listenin’.
Enna Mae turned to the trees.
“You think they’re followin’?”
The stranger’s eyes flicked toward the lowest part of the ridge.
“They’re closer than you want them to be.”
A branch snapped in the dark.
One.
Sharp.
Deliberate.
Ash jumped to his feet.
“Hell no—
Pop, we’re leavin’. Now.”
But Enna Mae raised a hand,
and the whole holler seemed to freeze.
“No,” she said.
“We ain’t runnin’ scared.
But we are movin’ with purpose.”
She turned to Poppy.
“You goin’ to find your mother, child?”
Poppy swallowed hard.
“Yes.”
“Then you won’t go alone.”
Ash grinned,
nervous but fierce.
“Damn right.”
Cypress barked once,
loud and sure.
Enna Mae stepped forward,
pressing her forehead to Poppy’s the way elder women pass blessings.
“Find Pocahontas Hale,” she whispered.
“Before the ones who hate her medicine find you.”
The stranger nodded.
“We leave before dawn.”
Poppy looked at the ridge —
the panthers’ ridge —
the place her mother once walked
and maybe still walks.
Her fear didn’t vanish,
but it shifted.
It became resolve.
Granny Woman 
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