by Rose Szabo
“Hm,” Grandmere said. “I was so sure.”
She turned; I heard the rustle of her skirts. The greenhouse door banged shut behind her.
When I was sure she was long gone, I sighed. And that was when I spotted the shape speeding toward me across the lawn.
Luma was a white wolf, her eyes glowing, her teeth gleaming. While I got out of my crouch the ground between us vanished like it was nothing. By the time I opened my mouth she’d knocked me sideways into the grass and put her mouth around my neck. I could feel her teeth gripping the base of my skull. A warning not to scream, but my mouth was already full of grass and dirt. Another set of paws thudded overhead. Grandpa Miklos, I thought. I hoped he wouldn’t just decide to rip my throat out.
I felt hands on my shoulders, and then one of them slipped around to cover my mouth, pressing the dirt harder into my mouth and nose. The hand smelled like rosewater perfume. Luma.
“Crawl,” she hissed in my ear. “Quietly. Or Grandpa kills you.”
We crawled across the lawn in the dark. The grass was cold against my hands. Luma changed back to the wolf and kept pace with me, slinking low, with Grandpa Miklos just behind me. What would happen when we reached the tree line? I wondered.
“Please,” I whispered. “I can explain.” Luma answered with a low growl.
We moved across the lawn and into the trees. Pine needles embedded themselves in my knees. Finally, Luma grabbed me by the collar of my dress and dragged me up against a tree. She changed and crouched in front of me, her long hair draped over her like a cloak. She gripped my face with one hand. Her fingernails were caked with dirt and blood.
“Tell me what you did,” she said.
I spat out grass and turf. “I never meant for it to happen like this—” But she sank her fingernails into my face, and I realized they were growing into claws, piercing my skin.
“I’ll pull your face off,” she said. “Grandpa says if we take you apart you’ll look like her on the inside.”
I looked over at Grandpa. He was hunched low, still in wolf form. He was growling at me. He’d lost one of his big canine teeth, and some of his other teeth were broken. His coat was ragged, too, his fur missing in spots on his sides. His ribs heaved with the effort of staying crouched to spring at me.
“What’s happened to Grandpa?” I asked. “He looks really sick.”
Luma glanced at him, and then back to me. “Don’t look at him! What do you care?”
“I’m your sister.”
“You killed our grandmother.”
“I didn’t!” I said. “She did.”
“She wasn’t even here yet.”
“There was a card, a card that showed her Grandmere’s—real face,” I said. “Grandmere tore up the cards, but I saw her real face again just now. In the scraps.”
She sniffed at me. “You’re not lying,” she said. “But what aren’t you telling me?”
I looked away. She grabbed me and wrenched my face back toward hers. I could feel blood trickling down my cheek where her claws had sunk in.
“I wrote her a letter,” I said. “After Grandma died. Asking her to come help me.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t know what to do.”
She let go of my face; I clapped my hands to my cheeks, not sure what to do to stop my strange, wrong-colored blood from spreading down onto my neck, my clothes.
“You’ve ruined everything about our family,” she said.
That made me angry.
“No, I didn’t,” I said. “Grandma Persephone wasn’t that much better. Think about what she did to Arthur.” When he heard the name, Grandpa Miklos began to growl.
“What did she do to Arthur?”
“I—” I realized I didn’t know. “Father said she made him to be our servant, I think—”
“Where’s Father?” Luma demanded. “I’ll ask him.”
“He’s—I think he’s dead—”
“Liar!” She slammed her hand into the tree just above my head. Her jaw contorted, her face expanding and shrinking from wolf to girl and back again. Her body snapped just as rapidly between shapes; it was like looking into a spinning door. She threw herself against the ground, against trees, scrabbling at the dirt, trying not to look at me. I sat paralyzed until I realized that she was trying to keep herself from killing me. Which meant she didn’t want me dead. Not yet, anyway.
“Luma, listen to me,” I said. She glanced up but kept striking the ground with her fists. “Grandmere can control me. She can make me do things. But she can’t control you. If we work together, maybe we can stop her.” Something dripped past my eye, and I realized I was bleeding from my forehead. I swiped at it. “Please. I need you to help me.”
“No,” she said, crawling toward me, still crying. “You can’t trick me. Not anymore. My sister is dead. You’re one of her now. Maybe you always were.”
Her mouth got long, and her big teeth got bigger, and she opened her mouth and wrapped it around my neck. I squeezed my eyes shut. I could let her end this, I thought. My body relaxed. I wondered if this was how a rabbit felt when she had it by the throat. It would be so easy to sigh and let her kill me. But what about Rhys, trapped upstairs with Grandmere? What about Margaret, or Mother? What about Grandpa, old and sick in the woods? What about Arthur?
And what about me?
My eyes snapped open.
“Grandpa,” I said. “Distract Luma ’til I get away.”
He threw himself at her and knocked her over, and the two wolves went rolling across the bed of pine needles. I scrambled and ran, first using my hands, and then on two feet. I kicked off my shoes. My feet scuffed across the pine needles.
I broke through the tree line and onto the lawn, my arms waving, my heart pounding. It was almost dawn. Behind me Luma and Grandpa were fighting, but soon they stopped. I was away, and now they were both coming for me. I could hear them, just barely, a whisper-soft padding that got louder as they got closer. Luma and Grandpa swung around so that they were between me and the house, driving me toward the cliff. They moved together, closing in on me. I wanted to yell out to Grandpa to stop, but I could barely catch my breath. I looked around, dizzily, for some way out. Behind me was the cliff, and beyond that, the ocean. It wasn’t a straight drop. But maybe if I was lucky, I could hit the water.
Luma leaped at me, but I leaped farther, and she stopped short at the last second to avoid the edge of the cliff. For a moment, my feet kicked in the air as I tried to run on nothing at all. I looked down and realized I’d made a mistake. The beach was narrow, but not that narrow. Beneath me were sharp black rocks. I was going to die.
And then, suddenly, there were crows.
They descended from the red-streaked dawn sky in a torrent, a curtain of black that plunged down around me. They battered at me with heavy wings, but they broke my fall, and I tumbled and slid on a carpet of crows. More of them, above me, snatched at my collar and hair and the skin of my arms, trying to get hold of me. We soared up, and turning in the air, I could see Grandmere striding across the grass below. Grandpa Miklos tried to growl at her, but Luma screamed at him and they took off at a run for the trees, before she could say anything that might call them back.
She was saving me, I realized, the only way she knew how. She might do anything she wanted to anyone else, but she wouldn’t let me get hurt. I was hers.
She opened her mouth, and the crows began to recede backward, carrying me with them. She was reeling me in. And when she had me, she’d fawn over me and tell me she loved me. And then she’d make me kill Rhys. For my own good.
But she couldn’t make me if she couldn’t catch me.
I tore at the birds holding me and leaped forward, taking big, running steps. Crows rose to meet my feet, not letting me fall. When I ran out of birds, I made my body into an arrow and pointed the arrow at the water.
Crows swarmed around me as I dove. They tried to grab me with their talons. But they were too late. I plunged, headf
irst, into a wave, and all around me heard the smacking sounds of their bodies breaking against the water and the rocks.
TEN
Eventually, I had to come up for air. I was afraid that the crows would still be circling overhead, looking for me. But when I came up to the surface and gasped out a few breaths, they were gone. Grandmere must be tired, I thought. These displays seemed to wear her out quickly. That meant I should do something now, while I had the chance. But what? I couldn’t just walk back in, not without a plan. Not without help. And Luma and Grandpa weren’t going to do anything to help me now, I was sure of it.
The sunlight was breaking over the water. I had to figure out how I was going to get my family back their house. And I had to do it without Grandmere seeing me, either through her own eyes or the eyes of the thing in the parlor that used to be my father. But I was so tired I could barely see straight.
I crawled out of the water. The air was chilly, my clothes clinging to me. I crept along the beach to the rickety stairs and climbed up them on hands and knees. When I got to the top, I hesitated. The woods were to my right. Up ahead, I could see Grandmere’s bedroom window, the sunlight gleaming off of it so brightly that I couldn’t see in. Was she awake in there? Was she watching me right now? I had to risk it. I gathered myself, and then sprang across the lawn. I kept expecting to see shapes sprinting after me from the woods, to feel claws on my back, but I vaulted the back garden gate and tore up the steps to the kitchen door.
Margaret stood inside, staring at me. She had been chopping up meat for stew and had a cleaver in one hand. As I watched, a little rivulet of blood ran off of the cleaver and onto the butcher block.
I could command her to silence, I thought. All I had to do was say the word. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to be any more like Grandmere than I already was. So I held my hands up in surrender, and then slowly, I put one finger to cross my lips.
She lowered the cleaver.
I put one of my hands over the other, and lifted them both up together. She tilted her head to one side, and then mimed lifting something herself. I nodded. Help me. Please, help me.
She stared at me for a long minute, and then nodded. She went to the cupboard and got down the silver coffee service. I almost laughed. Coffee might actually help. The nuns had cautioned us against it, even as they drank steaming vats of it.
I looked out at the garden. The iron tub had been emptied and turned upside down, but the table was still out there, the bunting tattered to almost nothing. It seemed like years ago that they’d poured champagne for me in the garden. Had they been happy to welcome me home, or trying to placate me? I kept hearing Grandma Persephone saying I was powerful. She’d known what I was. She’d tried to keep me away from her family because she knew I’d bring Grandmere here, or perhaps become just as bad as she was. She thought I’d make the whole family into my toys.
Margaret set something down and I jumped. The coffee was done, thick and oily-looking as ever. I poured myself a cup and sipped it.
Poison flooded my tongue. I spat it out and rushed to the sink to rinse out my mouth under the running water, elbowing Margaret out of the way. I spat until I could no longer taste it, and then looked at Margaret.
She shrugged. Had she tried to kill me?
I went back to the cup and stared into it. It was thick and sludgy at the bottom. I tipped it out onto the tray. The bottom layer was all dirt—mud, really. The rest was a kind of shiny, foul-smelling broth. If it wasn’t coffee, what was it?
I pointed back to the cup. She gestured to the things laid out on the counter, her preparations. A big glass jar of clear fluid. A brown paper bag. A smaller jar full of …
I examined the ingredients. The big jar was the source of that ungodly stink. It said FORMALDEHYDE in pharmaceutical type. The bag was full of dirt. The smaller jar was fingernails, and mats of black-and-white hair. From Zarrins, maybe? And finally, there was a small brown vial. Extract of the drakondia, labeled in Grandma Persephone’s tiny, spidery handwriting. I shuddered. Was it the poison, or the love potion? Either way, what Arthur had been drinking wasn’t coffee. It was a spell, and more importantly, something no living person should be drinking.
Margaret was trying to tell me something. She knew everything that had happened in this house. But it was all inside her, where I couldn’t get to it. It was like she was privately living in Grandpa’s silent country.
I could always summon him, I thought. Three sharp knocks on the door and he would be here. But I didn’t want to summon him. I wanted to know where he was summoned from.
I clapped my hands to get her attention. She turned to me. I straightened myself out as tall as I could, pressed my lips together tightly, mimed putting on a pair of smoked glasses. I thought myself long and lean and strangely delicate, almost womanly, yet also brittle and sharp. I sipped an invisible cup of coffee. And then I let myself drop the act, and was back to being Eleanor again. I raised my arms in a shrug, and looked around me—Where is he?
Margaret frowned, and then she nodded. She pointed at the floor.
I shrugged again. She pointed again, more insistently. Two sharp jabs at the ground beneath our feet.
The cellar.
Margaret saw my eyes widen. She got down a kerosene lantern from a high shelf and handed it to me. I nodded to her, and then realized that wasn’t enough. I hugged her, and to my surprise, she stood still and let me do it. She was warm and smelled like sage.
I left through the back garden and went around the side of the house to the cellar door.
It wasn’t locked on the outside, but when I tried it, somehow it wouldn’t lift more than a few inches. I got down on my knees, pried it up, and saw an interior latch. Strange. I jammed my fingers in through the gap and after a few tries, I managed to flick the latch open.
The cellar steps were steep, and when I reached the bottom it was almost pitch dark. I fumbled with the valve of the lantern, turning it until the flame was bright enough to see by.
The walls of the cellar were lined with dusty jars of pickles and preserves that gleamed a little in the lantern light. But there was also a hole in the dirt floor of the cellar, dug roughly. The hole had a ladder stuck in it. I crept to the edge and peered over with the lantern.
Down the hole was a second room, low-ceilinged, dug out of the earth, with walls of packed dirt. There was a long, lidded box made of cedar, a box long enough to bury someone in. And lying on the ground beside the box was Arthur’s old jacket.
I scrambled down the ladder, into the hole. On the floor lay my copy of Eliot’s poems, and on top of them, a pair of dark glasses, the old-fashioned kind with lenses on the sides.
I set down the lantern and crept over to the box. I was sure of what I’d find on the inside, when I lifted the lid. But I had to look. I got my fingers under the lip of it, dragged it to one side. Another latch that I had to scrape at with my fingers. Latches where they shouldn’t be, on the inside of things. I finally pulled the lid off. I wasn’t ready for what I saw.
Arthur lay in the box, but he didn’t look like the Arthur I knew. Arthur was graceful, animated, a body in motion. What lay in the box was a corpse. His eyes were hollows, the eyelids stitched shut over empty sockets. His arms lay folded across his chest. I wanted to cry. He wasn’t moving at all, not breathing. I put my hand to his hands. They weren’t just cool. They were as cold as the earthen walls around us.
I took a deep breath. There had to be a trick to this. I’d banished him, hadn’t I? And that had left him like this. So to bring him back, I had to summon him.
I crawled back up the ladder. The journal had said the door, but I couldn’t risk going to the front door. I got to the top of the cellar stairs and gave three little tentative knocks on the wood, hoping no one outside would hear me.
When I turned back to the pit, the coffin was empty.
“Looking for something?” said the shadows on the other side of the hole.
“Arthur?” I whispered.
His hands gripped the edge of the hole. They were long spidery hands, hands that spanned an octave and a half on the piano keys. In the dark of the cellar they became something else. Strangler’s hands.
“Well, you summoned me,” he said. “What do you want?”
Upstairs I heard footsteps. Both of us tilted our heads up toward the ceiling. I wasn’t sure whose they were, but they reminded me of Grandmere.
“Listen to me,” I said. “Everything’s gone wrong. Father’s … dead, I think.” I choked on the words a little bit. “Luma and Grandpa are in the woods. Rhys is trapped upstairs and Grandmere wants me to—to eat him. Will you help me save him?”
“I don’t see why you think I would be interested.”
“Because the two of you…” I hesitated. “I heard you tell my father you were staying for Rhys.”
“Do you really think that’s true?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”
“You don’t like to know,” he said. “None of you do. I spent years trying to figure out how to use that against you. And now you’ve done all my work for me.”
“You want to hurt us?”
He grinned at me humorlessly. “You don’t know anything about me.”
Crablike, he crawled across the hole toward me, his long arms and legs bridging it easily. I fell and started to scramble backward, away from him. But he caught up and loomed over me. He couldn’t hurt me, I told myself. I could stop him whenever I wanted to. But it didn’t make me any less afraid. I’d thought he was annoyed with us, amused by us, resigned to us. He wasn’t. He was full of rage, and that rage alone was terrifying.
“You don’t know what I’ve suffered,” he said. “You don’t know what I’ve lost.”
“So tell me.” It came out small and weak. I tried again. “Tell me.” He stopped moving, stunned, while his jaw clicked with the effort of staying shut. Something was keeping him from talking, but I was stronger than it. I sat upright and grabbed his face with both hands. “Tell me!”