by Rita Woods
The boy hovered just inside the door. He was carrying a lantern and two food tins and looked near drowned.
“What’re you doin’?” he asked again.
Winter blinked. “Nothing.” Her voice was hoarse. “I’m not doing anything.” Her hand throbbed.
“Well,” he said, eyeing her suspiciously. He placed the tins near her. She made no move toward them. “Frank and Colm still not back.”
She said nothing to this.
“Never seen nothin’ like this storm,” he went on. “Never in my life. It’s like the skies just opened up and everything in the heavens just fallin’ out.”
Still, she said nothing. Her silence seemed to make him uncomfortable. He dug a toe in the straw and fidgeted. “Brought you some beans and biscuits. Ain’t got a whole lot left, leastways not ’til Frank and Colm make it back.”
Winter stared at the ground. Not for the first time, she wished for a fast river current to carry the slaver brothers away, or a bolt of lightning to strike them both dead. What would happen, she wondered, if they never came back? Would the silent Paddy order Dix to tie her and Louisa to the back of a horse and complete the march south? Or would he think that too much bother and leave them chained in the barn until they starved to death?
Dix shuffled his feet and cleared his throat, but when it became clear that Winter wasn’t going to speak to him, he turned to go. At the barn door, he stopped.
“You might get sold to some nice folks,” he said. His voice was so low she barely heard it over the hail and wind.
Her head snapped up and she locked eyes with him. Even in the dim light, she saw him flush. She stared until he hung his head and looked away, before disappearing back out into the weather.
A searing pain shot through her hand and Winter sucked her teeth. Hissing in pain, she opened her fist to drop the chain she’d been gripping, crying out in shocked surprise. The chain was gone, or rather the part she’d been holding in her hand was gone. A length of chain was still attached to the metal loop in the floor, and around her ankle the ring still dangled a foot of links, but the part she’d been holding, the little section she’d been focusing on so intently when Dix interrupted was … gone. Instead, mean-looking welts pulsed across her palm, like a row of figure eights. Breathing fast, she squatted and pressed her hand against the dirt floor, sighing as it cooled the burning in her palm.
Sweet Jesus on a horse!
The pain in her hand was so bad that it took her a moment—two short breaths—for the realization to hit her, and when it did, she leaped to her feet, the blisters in her hand momentarily forgotten. Barely daring to breathe, staring at the iron band clamped around her ankle, she took a few tentative steps toward the wall behind the horse stall. One foot, then two, and still she moved freely. Heart pounding, she yanked at the chain around her ankle. The newly freed end was as smooth as window glass, as if it had always been meant to be just a tiny spit of free chain and nothing else.
Winter whooped and slapped her good hand over her mouth.
“Louisa!” Winter squatted by the injured girl and shook her. “Louisa, wake up!”
Louisa opened her eyes. Some of the swelling had started to go down on her face and she was beginning to look more like herself. Winter couldn’t decide if this was a good thing or not. The herbalist glared silently at Winter.
“Look!” Winter held the length of free chain up for Louisa to see.
Louisa looked and Winter watched with grim satisfaction as the herbalist’s expression changed from irritation to astonishment.
“What…?” gasped Louisa, struggling to sit up. “What is that? They let you loose?”
Winter shook her head as she helped the other girl to sitting. “I let me loose. I did it.”
Louisa looked between the chain’s smooth end and Winter’s grinning face, her expression unreadable. “Well,” she said finally, “what you waitin’ for then? You better get on up outa here ’fore those white boys come back.”
“I have to get you loose! Yours aren’t even hooked to anything. It’ll be easier!”
“Get me loose?” Louisa tugged at the chains binding her ankles. “For what? I ain’t goin’ nowhere! Look at me, I’m a mess. Can’t hardly sit up on my own. How I’m goin’ to get away from here?”
Winter’s smile faded away. “But … but you said you weren’t ever going back. You said you’d rather die.”
“Then I guess I’m-a die,” said Louisa. She lay back with a moan and turned her back.
With no thought in her mind except that it was just stinking bad luck that first she should get captured by the pattyrollers and then that she should be captured with this horrible, horrible girl, Winter straddled the herbalist and grabbed her blouse, yanking her roughly upright.
“I am sick of you, Louisa,” she hissed. “You hear me? Sick to death of you and your mean-hearted, foul-tongued ways! You want to feel sorry for yourself? Fine! But you’re coming with me out of here! If I could find my way back to Remembrance without you, Lord knows I’d leave you. But I can’t. So you can just shut up all that foolishness and help me figure out a way to get you up on your feet and moving. You hear me?”
Louisa gaped openmouthed, and for a moment Winter thought she might strike out. It wouldn’t be the first time. And then the girl began to laugh. Not the crazed laughter of before, but a deep-throated, full-hearted belly laugh. Startled, Winter released her and climbed off.
“What is so funny?” she asked as Louisa held her sides and cackled on the barn floor.
Louisa took a wheezy breath. “Well,” she said. “It looks like the butterfly has a sting.”
Winter crossed her arms. “It would serve you then not to forget that.”
Louisa rolled her eyes. “I guess the first thing I need to do is fill my belly. Then you can show me how to get outa these blasted chains.”
* * *
“You’re breaking my neck,” gasped Winter.
“Then slow down!”
Winter clutched Louisa around the waist, trying to match her gait to the older girl’s. Removing Louisa’s leg chains had proven to be much easier than getting her up on her feet and walking. The two girls stumbled clumsily around the barn, keeping an ear out for their captors. Winter did her best to help Louisa but only managed to keep throwing the older girl off-balance.
“Alright! Enough! This ain’t workin’ at all,” exclaimed Louisa. She collapsed, sweaty and pale in an exhausted heap.
“Then what?” snapped Winter. “What are we supposed to do?”
“I don’t know, but this ain’t it. Won’t even make it out the barn at this rate.”
Before Winter could reply, they heard voices outside the barn. As they came closer, she scrambled to a spot near the horse stalls and motioned a warning to Louisa.
Colm stepped into the barn and silently studied the two girls. “Well, now,” he said, looking at Louisa. “Bless my eyes. If you haven’t perked up quite fine.”
Colm squatted in front of Louisa and poked at her face with his finger, turning her head this way and that. The girl said nothing, but Winter saw her wince with pain at his touch.
Colm stood with a grunt. “Still got the face of a donkey’s arse, but we won’t be sellin’ her for her beauty, will we?”
He smiled at Winter. “We got you for that.”
He began to pace, and each time his steps brought him close to her, Winter cringed against the splintered wood of the stall. He stopped and stood with his back to her, staring out of the half-open door at the driving rain.
“Christ Almighty,” he swore under his breath. “Never seen weather like this in the whole of my existence. The roads are like pudding. Couldn’t get nothin’. No supplies, nothing! I swear on my old Nana’s eyes, it feels like we’re never to get shed of this devil-be-fucked place.”
He whirled and was on Winter before she could take a breath. Grabbing her hair, he yanked her head back hard so that she was forced to look into his eyes. He seemed paler
than he had the last time she’d seen him, and there were dark, purplish shadows under his eyes.
Don’t let him see the chain. He mustn’t see it! Don’t let him see the chain.
“You’re a sweet little cherry, aren’t you, lass?” he hissed. “Do you know what you cost me, gal? Do you? Are you worth it? My man Zeke, my brother? Are you worth my brother?”
He stared into her face, breathing hard, his breath hot and strangely sweet. Her hands were wrapped around his, trying to brace herself against the pain of him yanking her hair. His hands were cold as stone and tangled tightly in her curls. She hung there, helpless, gazing into his eyes, too terrified to speak, until he flung her back down.
Backing away, he took a bottle from his overcoat pocket and drank from it, never taking his eyes off her. His hands shook so badly that he spilled liquor onto his chin, down his shirt.
Run! Run now! The thought a roar in her head.
But she couldn’t run. She was afraid of even moving, afraid he’d see then that she was no longer chained.
“My brother,” he said. “Did you know my brother? No, of course not. Why would a lass like you know my brother?”
She stared, unblinking, down at her lap. She was afraid that if he looked in her eyes he would know that she had seen his brother all those weeks before; had seen him appear like an apparition inside Remembrance, chasing the runaway, Zeus. Had seen Mother Abigail whisper in his ear as he lay sprawled on the ground. Had heard his screams echoing behind them as they carried Zeus across the clearing toward the settlement.
Colm took another drink. This time, he got most of it in his mouth. He smiled and gave Winter a small salute.
“My brother Reavus. The youngest. The finest of the Clay brothers. Full of grit and lightning, he was. Came up to this cursed country a month or so back slave chasin’. Came back to home crazy as a loon.”
He plopped down in the dirt next to her. She gripped her skirt, holding herself still as his eyes bored into her.
“Talkin’ about ghosts and witches and such”—he took another drink—“you ever hear of such nonsense?”
Winter tried to shake her head but all she could do was blink.
“I said, you ever hear such nonsense?” Colm screamed. He was on his knees, leaning over her. Winter cowered, shaking her head wildly. She brought a hand up to defend against his blows but the slaver didn’t strike her. He slumped down once again and sipped from his bottle.
“Me neither,” he said, calm again. “I told him and I told him that it was foolishness. And a sin against the church as well, but he would not be moved. Kept saying about how some old woman, a giant mammy, and a nigger with no eyes had cursed him.”
He swirled the bottle round and round, staring at the patterns the liquid made inside. She flinched as a gust of wind slammed the barn. From somewhere high above them came the sound of wood splintering.
“Want to know what happened to my brother? Want to know what happened to Reavus Clay?” he asked suddenly.
No, she thought, she didn’t.
She nodded.
“Well,” said Colm. He leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially. “When he got back, he went out in the woods and cut a tree for Susie. Susie was his daughter. Tiny little thing. He got Susie a tree. Said it was for Christmas even though it wasn’t nowhere near Christmas. That girl surely does love Christmastime.”
He drank the last from his bottle then tossed it into the shadows. Winter flinched again at the sound of glass breaking.
“Well, ol’ Reave, my fine baby brother, the best of the Clays, put that tree up right in the middle of their cabin. Bloody near took up every inch of the place. Oh, he made them a Christmas, didn’t he? He put all manner of fancies under that tree. Toilet water for his wife, a swath of calico cloth, a silver mirror for Susie. Stuffed that place like a rich man’s fool. Then he went outside and threw himself down the well.”
Winter swallowed hard. She remembered the lanky, dark-haired man that had come to the Edge hunting the slaves, remembered his slow drawl as he’d tried to negotiate with Mother Abigail, how he’d called her Auntie. She tried to ease away, but Colm Clay wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her tight against his side.
“And so we had to come and see, you know,” he whispered wetly against her ear. “Me and Frank. Had to come and find the niggers who could do such a thing to our Reave.”
Twisting around, he put his lips against hers. She felt the sour/sweet burn of his whiskey. When he tried to push his tongue between her lips, she clenched her teeth, bile rising in her throat.
She stared into his eyes and felt the heat, not in her hand this time, but everywhere. There was no thought in her mind except that he release her. She saw the pink splotching his cheeks, the fine black hairs between his brows. She saw the pores of his face, the specks of dirt settled there. He was just millions of bits shaped like a man, and there were spaces between those bits, and she could touch them and move them. And he was no different than the chain. She could …
The slaver jerked away, toppling backward. He lay on his back, breathing hard, then rolled onto his stomach and got to his hands and knees. He looked at her. She looked back.
She could smell him, the weakness of him. His skin, his bones, the things that made him seem like a real, solid thing. Well, that was all an illusion, wasn’t it? It would be so easy to take it all apart. Like the chain. Like the chicken.
“Shite,” he exclaimed staggering to his feet. “I’m well and truly squiffy.”
He squinted at her, seemed to struggle to hold himself upright. He seemed unaware that a thin stream of blood was leaking from his right eye.
“No magic. No witches. You’re just a regular nigger gal, right?” His speech was thickly slurred.
Eyes narrowed, Winter smiled through clenched teeth. “Yes, just a regular … nigger girl.”
Colm stared at her and she held his gaze, rage churning inside her. For a moment she saw something flash in his eyes. Confusion? Fear? The slaver blinked, his eyes narrow, glazed over, then he nodded and walked unsteadily out into the storm.
He’s just a thing. Made up of tiny pieces. And he would never touch her again.
“Winter!”
She spun toward Louisa.
Things. They were all just things. Made up of smaller things she could take apart.
“Winter!”
She felt a sudden release, as if a knot had been undone from round her chest. Louisa was gaping at her, her eyes wide. Winter stepped toward her, and Louisa sucked in a breath, drew her knees up under her chin. The two girls stared at each other.
“This storm won’t last long,” said Louisa at last into the silence, her voice low.
“No?” Winter felt sick to her stomach. She lowered herself to the floor.
“A day, maybe two.”
She nodded and roughly wiped her mouth. She could still taste the slaver on her tongue.
“You gon’ have to go with or without me,” said Louisa. “And it gon’ have to be soon.”
Louisa was sitting up, her back to the wall. She flinched under Winter’s gaze.
Winter noticed, but it hardly mattered. “Yes,” was all she said.
38
Margot
She wasn’t sure the scratching was real. She’d slept so poorly the past few nights that she was having a hard time telling awake from sleep. During the daytime she wandered through the tense settlement, her eyes burning with fatigue, her head feeling as if it were stuffed with horsehair. She’d just decided that the noise was a dream echo when she heard her name.
“Margot?” The voice not quite a whisper. “Margot? You awake in there?”
She rolled on her side with a groan and pushed back the blanket that covered the opening to her lean-to, and found herself looking into Petal’s worried face.
“Qu’est-ce que c’est?” she asked, her voice hoarse with exhaustion. “What is it? Are you ill? Is it the babies?”
Petal shook her
head. “You best start with coffee.” She thrust a dented metal cup through the gap toward Margot. “My Nanny used to always say, wasn’t no bad news in the world that couldn’t wait ’til after your first cup.”
Bad news?
Margot’s stomach dropped at the words but she managed a weak smile.
“That sounds like something my grand-mère would say.”
She pulled herself from the shelter and happily accepted the steaming coffee. Petal’s smile flashed on, then off, never quite reaching her eyes. She chewed her lip as she shot nervous looks over her shoulder. Margot sighed, savoring the coffee as it traced a warm path down her insides. Petal was right. Any bad news could wait until she’d finished her coffee.
When, too soon, there was nothing left in the cup but wet grounds, she took a deep breath and turned toward Petal. The girl was kneeling a few feet from the lean-to, turned partly away from Margot. Her body was as tense as a bowstring, her thin arms wrapped protectively around her hugely pregnant belly.
“Petal?”
“It’s all a mess,” said Petal, struggling to her feet. She motioned for Margot to follow her. “Everybody fussin’ and fightin’. It’s all just one big cock-a-doodle-doo mess.”
At the Central Fire, Margot saw that Petal was right.
Remembrance was unraveling. Uphill, she could see that several cabins, their doors hanging open, had clearly been abandoned. A handful of men stood facing each other on the other side of the fire, their voices raised, gesturing wildly. From where she stood, Margot could not make out the words, but it felt bad.
“What is it? What is happening?”
Petal turned. There were tears in her eyes. “It’s comin’ undone. Remembrance is comin’ apart. Some folks talkin’ ’bout leavin’. Goin’ on to Canada. Sayin’ Mother Abigail can’t protect us no more.”
Margot pressed her lips together and watched the scene unfolding before her.
“Some of the mens, they sayin’ it be death for sure. It’s comin’ on winter. They say everybody need to stay and protect what’s ours.”