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A Hawk in the Woods

Page 24

by Carrie Laben


  Leaves were floating. Brown and yellow. Abby caught one, the water cold around her fingers. Oak. Fallen too soon.

  Martha stared at her until Abby said, “What, are you going to push me in?”

  “Jesus, Abby. No, I’m just thinking, okay?”

  “Thinking about what?”

  “About when we were kids.”

  “It wasn’t that great,” Abby said, feeling defensive without knowing why.

  “It was when we were here, though, wasn’t it? No one messed with us when we were here.”

  Abby nodded slowly. No one messed with them when they were here. A long time ago, she’d enjoyed that time to herself, when no one was paying attention. A long time ago, she’d been a child.

  She could do this. She’d always been able to do what she set her mind to, and she could do this, and save her sister and herself too.

  Dark fell before they got to the standing stone. As she stepped into the clearing, her feet crunched on frost in the grass.

  “Martha. Jesus.”

  “I’m…” Martha visibly gathered her strength. She was really scared, Abby realized with dismay. “I’m not doing that. I think they can do it too. It would only make sense, right?”

  Abby wanted to laugh out loud. If he’d been kinder, more interested in persuading, Grandfather could have gotten his wish in one more generation.

  Martha kept trying to unfold what they’d folded, but then they pushed her and Abby could see her face go blank and her work undone. They jumped hot to cold, light to dark. If this spot wasn’t as strong as Grandfather claimed, if Abby needed to wait for the stars to be right, she’d be screwed.

  At least they didn’t have the technique to knot off time, yet. You had to be taught.

  “Okay,” she said, and pressed a hand to Martha’s chest to lean her back onto the stone. On her shoulder the tumor was the size of a cabbage rose and restricted her movements, and it felt for a breath like Martha was going to to change her mind at the last moment and fight. Abby almost despaired, almost pushed.

  Buddy growled. She was pretty sure it was at the hawk that had landed awkwardly in the only tree to dare to throw a branch out over the clearing. Pretty sure she was still not Grandfather. She didn’t push Martha, just to prove to herself that she was doing the right thing, and also because Martha stopped fighting at the sight of the hawk.

  She was at the last of her strength. She flashed back and forth. Facing down, facing up. A healthy body. A body wracked by something she’d barely noticed growing.

  She threw herself completely into her sister at the same moment the infants riding the hawks flung themselves downward and tried to do the same, but they didn’t know what they were doing, they never had the chance to learn.

  The starving inchoate creatures bore down on her but she and her sister didn’t have to give in. She said the words, yelled them really. She sat up. The near-skeletal form was across her lap. Damn, I look like hell, she thought, and then caught herself. It was not her and it was important not to think of it as her. It was it, empty and rotting like a house or a barn. The tumor was huge on its shoulder.

  Then it was no longer an it, but a them. The body with the tumor screamed, high pitched, wordless because they never learned language, nothing but the urge to take and take and take around their head. The scream itself was what taxed the body over the edge. She rolled them away, lurched to her feet, let them fall to the forest floor to break physical contact. The scream didn’t cut off, instead it died away and echoed down the forest. Every living creature for miles could hear what happened, most could smell it too. The rocks and earth absorbed it. Sometimes patches of woods like these stayed cold and shadowed and avoided for generations, with stories about ghosts or strange apes around them. All the better. This would be part of the lore that someone might see here if anyone else ever dared try for a ritual in the cabin.

  Bare toes burned in the snow. Why didn’t Martha put on shoes? You didn’t give me time. A whimper. She touched the locket around her neck, and Martha seemed to calm down.

  Her old body twitched in the leaf litter and died, the hunger with it. No strength left for them to make a return trip, not after the last desperate plunge and the scream. A hawk plummeted out of the tree beside them and Buddy started to run in to sniff it, then shied away with his ruff raised.

  Now she just needed to bury them. No need to use Buddy for it; they wouldn’t stir for a while and Martha should be able to bring time to a spring thaw by the time she’d, they’d, driven to town to buy a shovel and a cleaver and more salt. The ceremony would be simple and they’d stay down, like Mom did. She felt so much stronger now.

  Abby started the walk back to the cabin, striding, swinging her arms, barely feeling the cold. She felt all-powerful, that she pulled that off.

  In the back of her head she still heard a whimper from Martha. She wondered how long it would be before she would get over it, what she could do to cheer her sister up. “Listen,” she said, jolly, like she planned it this way all along. “We can have that wine now.”

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank my editor Ross Lockhart at Word Horde and my fantastic agent Stephen Barbara. Paul Tremblay and John Langan were big parts of making this happen as well.

  Thanks to those who read all or part of this in manuscript form and offered valuable feedback, support, and the occasional ‘fuck yeah’—Myrrah Dubey, Cara Hoffman, Janice Laben, Leah Laben, Robert Levy, Kaylen Mallard, Nick Mamatas, Andrew May, and James Nokes.

  Thanks to the MacDowell Colony and the Anne LaBastille Memorial Writers Residency for offering me the gift of time and space and community and feeling like a real writer.

  Thanks to the University of Montana MFA crew—especially Jon Bachmann, Zoey Barnes, Kim Bell, Alice Bolin, Nick Bosworth, Mackenzie Cole, Ariana Del Negro, Sam Duncan, Josh Foman, Elizabeth Geier, Molly Laich, Rosemary Madero, Emma Pfieffer, Brian Pillion, Jordan Rossen, Julie Rouse, Asta So, B.J. Soloy, Jamie Stathis, Emma Torzs, Keema Waterfield, Diana Xin, Khaty Xiong, Nathan Yrizarry, and all those who joined me in Debra Magpie Earling’s witchy workshops (and of course Debra herself). Love to my advisor Judy Blunt, even if I’ve strayed from the path of truth and light known as creative nonfiction! And to the Nut House girls + co. (including but not limited to Megan ‘Little Bee’ Bland, Megan ‘Biscuit’ Cleinmark, Deana DeWire, Elena Evans, Colleen Fitzpatrick, Shane Glidewell, Connie and Julian McCune, Karin Riley, Alan Swanson, Aaron Fleisch, Jenn Estrada, and Boluda) and persons affiliated with the 503 and Butterfly Herbs (again ibnlt River Aloia, Charlie Darling, Ingrid Malesich, Jeff Rummel, Skunk Sanner, and Kris Van Whye), without whom I’d have starved or frozen to death.

  Besides the above, thanks to S.J. Bagley, Laird Barron, Steve Berman, Daniel Braum, Jenn Brissett, Michael Cisco, Neil Clarke, Ellen Datlow, Erik den Breejen, Andy Duncan, Andrea Elliott, John Foster, Amy Gall, Janie Geiser, Molly Grattan, Karen Heuler, Judy Hoffman, Amanda Huynh, Gabino Iglesias, Juleen Johnson, Laura Kammermeier, Nick Kaufmann, David James Keaton, Gwendolyn Kiste, Matthew Kressel, Sarah Langan, Victor LaValle, J. Robert Lennon, Marc Lepson, Casey Llewellyn, Greg Marshall, Tara Mateik, Justin Maxwell, Koji Nakano, Marc Ohrem-Leclef, Ekaterina Sedia, Chandler Klang Smith, Farah Rose Smith, Haruko Tanaka, Morgan Thorson, Genevieve Valentine, Sean Wallace, Michael Wehunt, and Joyce Zonana.

  Speaking of not freezing to death, maximum thanks to Charles “Chuk” Radder, who probably did not think when he let me move in that he’d end up bankrolling the writing of a novel.

  About the author

  Carrie Laben grew up in western New York. She earned her BS at Cornell and later her MFA at the University of Montana. She now lives in Queens, where she spends a lot of time staring at birds.

  Her work has appeared in such venues as Birding, Clarkesworld, The Dark, Indiana Review, Okey-Panky, and Outlook Springs. In 2017 she won the Shirley Jackson Award in Short Fiction for her story “Postcards from Natalie” and Duke University’s Documentary Essay P
rize for the essay “The Wrong Place”. In 2015 she was selected for the Anne LaBastille Memorial Writer’s Residency, in 2018 she was a MacDowell Fellow, and in 2019 she was a resident at Brush Creek.

  This is her first novel. She is currently at work on a book of essays about urban environmentalism.

 

 

 


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