Follow Me to Ground

by Sue Rainsford

  –Before you were orphaned?

  –No.

  –After, then.

  He looked up, into the trees. The water waist-deep. I stayed where I was though the long grass was itching me.

  –So what happened?

  He was clenching his cheeks like he wanted his gums to start bleeding.

  –After our parents died we moved in with Auntie, but we were always cooped up and alone. And she’d never had kids, didn’t know what to do with us. We’d a half-deck of cards we used to play with.

  –And … Olivia turned at some stage?

  –When I was ten and she was thirteen.

  I chewed on my cheek, said

  –Girls mature faster.

  Girl Cures, with their secrets and their sideways glances.

  –Indeed they do.

  –Could you have told your aunt?

  –Auntie was already old. No match for Olivia.

  He was up to his chest. Kept splashing his face to cover his tears.

  –When she moved in with Harry I thought it was all done with. But then they couldn’t get along.

  I looked to the reeds and saw his vest snagged there. It had caught at an angle that made it look like a wisp of smoke, thin and pale.

  –Once she made me sit outside all night and there was ice ’tween my toes in the morning.

  I came in the front door, itching and irritable with the feel of the hot day sticking to me. The whole walk home a phantom Olivia was strutting beside me, singing and shaking out her hair.

  Inside the hall I took one step, then another. Moved hushed as I could as I made for the stairs. Still, he heard me; said my name and told me to come into the kitchen. He was sitting at the table and his chest was glowing. Full of heat. His shirt uneven across his shoulders with a look of fur bristling.

  –We need to redirect some roots. They’re coming too close to the house.

  I looked out the window, to the tall silent trees.

  –And what? They’re gonna come up through the floor?

  He was holding a mug and kept looking inside it, thinking he’d magic it full of coffee again.

  –No. But they’ll grow criss and cross. Make it harder to put Cures in The Ground.

  Garden work was the last thing I felt like, but I couldn’t say no. Not when I’d been away from the house all day. Not when anything at all might give him cause to talk about Samson.

  How Samson stopped me doing my share.

  How Samson made me lazy, how Samson made me slow.

  We went out back and the dry crackle in the air felt stronger there than it had at the river.

  If I put The Ground in my mouth it’d be spicy, rich.

  We walked toward the end of the garden, straight over the grass as the weather had baked shut the dangerous soil.

  The trees seemed to give off their own separate heat. The closer we came to them the more it felt like a hand on the back of my neck. The hedged growth around them, brittle and thick with briar. A few more weeks and roses would start to grow there.

  –Here.

  Father parting the growth, making not quite enough space for me to pass through.

  –Go through and tell me where you see the roots are risen.

  I looked at the thickety branches, the tangle of stem.

  –Go through there, I said.

  –Yes, he said, not catching my tone. Go through here and see where the roots are risen.

  –And then what?

  –And then what do you think? We’ll sing to them. I’ll pass you the song.

  Which meant he’d sing it to me, chord by chord, and I’d keep on repeating him until the work was done. I pulled my dress up around my waist and took a sideways step. A thin branch swung back and scraped my knee.

  –Be a little swift, Ada.

  I’d a pain in my jaw and realised it was my teeth, grinding. I thought of Samson’s hard cheeks, his child body hurting with cold.

  Another step, another scrape, another step. A thorn in my left heel.

  I wanted to wipe a cloth over my face and lie down in the cool of my room.

  –Can you see anything?

  –Not yet.

  Being careful not to snap. Careful not to bicker. Nothing about me unusual, nothing calling for conversation or attention. Inside of the hedge now and squatting down to part it a little further, ready to call back to him that I could see no troublesome growth, only brittle ground.

  But then I was seeing something.

  A pile of waste that had no cause to be there.

  Pale branches, mostly yellowish and thin. Or rather, they would have been branches, but their colour and shape weren’t right. Where had they come from? From some strange tree since extinct in our garden? But there were so many of them, it made no sense that they’d all tumbled at once, in this close spot, and then stayed here.

  I reached for the closest one, long and thick, and once I had it in my hand I felt a sadness seep into me. A puffing, breathy kind of sadness that a Cure might feel right after they finished crying.

  Father said my name in such a way I knew it wasn’t the first time.

  –What are these?

  What I wanted to say: What are these, and why are they crying?

  I held the would-be branch above my head and looked up over my shoulder, could only see part of him – he’d crescented his arm to push the prickle-growth further aside, but otherwise he wasn’t moving.

  –I’d forgotten they were here.

  I turned around fully then, though my legs were scratching pinker and pinker and my dress getting torn besides. Snagged in a swirl around me. He was looking at it in my hand, but making no move to touch it.

  It was high afternoon now and the sun was an upturned bucket above us. I didn’t like the colour this branch turned when the light came through.

  –What are they?

  His nose moved a half-inch up his face, came down again.

  –Your predecessors.

  I knew what he meant. Right away I knew, but my thoughts kept darting around. I said

  –They’re branches.

  On one side of the branch I could see an indentation. A divot. Very smooth.

  –That’s the problem. They should be bones.

  And now he did move to touch it, taking it from me and moving his forearm slowly past my cheek.

  –You can see – here, and he twisted its other side toward me, you can see here where it started to turn …

  A bird in a tree, trilling. I thought If I ask him to stop talking he will.

  –This happened a few times. They’d take on the colour or the shape or the density in places, and then they’d stop, and then nothing I could do would get them going again.

  He tossed it back onto the pile. It made a tinny, echoey sound when it landed.

  –Can you see the roots?

  –But there’s so many.

  –Where?

  –Not roots. So many of these.

  –You knew you weren’t my only try.

  –Yes, but …

  I wanted to say It’s not how I was made that bothers me, or that it took you so long to get it right. It’s that you left these here, not caring that I might find them. It’s that you tossed these half-formed things away without ceremony. That you wouldn’t pretend, even in these few moments, that any of it was special to you at all.

  What I knew he’d say in return:

  Sounds like a Cure’s gotten under your skin, Ada.

  He was looking around for the roots again. Every time he moved he blocked a different side of the sun.

  –Nothing sacred about birth, Ada. You know that. No matter the species.

  –I know.

  –Unspectacular business, coming into the world.

  –Yes. I know.

  These felled versions of myself. What about them could not cohere? What about them went wrong that the earth wouldn’t compact into organ or the branches blanch into bone?

  –How many are there?

  –How
many tries? Including you?

  I had a pain in my heart and put a hand there, heard myself make an angry bark of a sound, thinking heart was the wrong word to use.

  –Ada.

  –Yes.

  –You know how you were made.

  –Yes.

  –You’ve always known.

  –Yes.

  –Help me find these roots.

  I moved around on my knees, finding the risen roots and spending an hour singing them backwards and down. Back into The Ground, back the way they came.

  That night I dreamt of my partial siblings. Dreamt myself crouching beside them and asking if they could hear me. Dreamt them angry at me for coming together, for walking around whole and entire.

  What’s so special about you, Ada? Why do you get to be alive?

  But I wasn’t born alive, I told them. I’ve only been alive a little while.

  Meaning only since I met Samson, and then the branch-bones laughed at me. And well they might. It was a foolish thing to say, even in a dream. Foolish to fall in line with a Cure’s girlhood and imagine such feelings belonged to me. But I had been living a muted kind of life, and I had gone all this time without meeting someone who’d fall asleep, of their own accord, beside me.

  Paula Greene

  Go visit her now?

  Oh, I think it’d be too much for me.

  We’re all so old, now, and she still looks the same …

  Besides, she stopped seeing to us after her father died, and there’s no other reasons to go there – you don’t exactly call in for tea.

  –She must’ve liked him enough if she had a baby with him.

  –I keep telling you. When Olivia looks at people she doesn’t see people. She sees means to ends.

  –Why do you put up with her?

  –She’s my sister. We’re orphans … what?

  –If Father treated me badly he’d stop being my father.

  –Ha! You think he treats you well?

  –He does.

  –So well you have to sneak around to see me. So well he puts you to work everyday.

  –It’s not work. It’s what I was made for.

  –Looks a lot like labour – and poorly paid.

  He was arguing now for the sake of it, as was his way.

  –Well, whatever about anything else, Father is set to do something.

  –Like what?

  –I don’t know. Something to keep us apart.

  He looked into the trees. I couldn’t see his eyes for the shadowy shade. I said

  –We’ll leave.

  He looked at me. His eyes still a band of black.

  –We will?

  –Yes.

  His face creasing and uncreasing. The quiver in his mouth.

  –I need you to come get me at the house tonight, without the truck. Come for me after dark and I’ll be ready.

  –Without the truck?

  –Yes.

  –But a storm is coming.

  –Father will hear it if you bring the truck.

  He took a breath and held it, started nodding.

  –All right?

  –All right.

  I’d a plan that I didn’t know would work. I’d had to come up with it so quick. It’d be long, it’d make me weary, it’d cause me some pain and it’d be risky, and it’d all be undone if Father wasn’t in the form to hunt because of the storm.

  He drove me back up the road. Before I got out of the car I straightened my dress, said

  –Is that why you like being with me?

  Looking at me blank.

  –Is that why you don’t mind being with me the way I am? Not a Cure, and everything else.

  –What’s everything else? What Olivia’s done?

  I thought of a small, freckled Samson. I couldn’t picture Olivia as a child.

  –Dammit Ada. You think you’re so strange. You’re not that strange. Strangest thing about you is you don’t get sick and tired of everyone complaining at you all the time.

  His face as open to me as a book or a flower.

  I couldn’t help it; started laughing.

  Melinda Sacran

  I saw her in the woods and she was lying with a wolf.

  I was twelve and I ran away from home and I saw her with her arms around the wolf and it was licking her neck.

  Licking her like she was sweating gravy.

  I ran all the way home again and had a fever for days but I had to hide it because if I was sick I’d be taken to her.

  Been hiding and ignoring sicknesses my whole life.

  People tried to tell me I was seeing things but I saw her.

  I saw her.

  I still dream about that long pink tongue and her with her head back. Laughing.

  I got back to the house and Father was clucking into The Burial Patch.

  He heard me come onto the patio and turned around.

  –Going hunting later?

  He looked at my wet smock and my mussed hair.

  –How was your walk?

  There was a bulge in my throat that I hoped didn’t show.

  –I’ll stop seeing him.

  He picked up the shovel and wedged it in The Ground.

  –Just like that?

  –He wouldn’t give me any straight answers.

  In the sunshine he was glowing. His grey-blond hair looked like a cap of pure light.

  –You’ll find something else that pleases you.

  –I will.

  He nodded.

  –Well, I’m glad.

  I looked at my dusty feet, and when he didn’t say anything else I went inside.

  About an hour or so later, the storm started. Quiet at first, and then all of a sudden the trees were thrashing and the windows and doors were shaking in their frames. I had to keep relighting the stove.

  Once the sun went down, I could see Father itching to go. He draped his shirt and pants over a kitchen chair and started rolling his shoulders, wiggling his jaw. He dropped to all fours and looked back at me, squatted with kindling on my knees. It suited him better, his animal gait. Though his limbs were modelled on a Cure male they were always ready to bend, his shoulders happily slinking forward and his hips rising behind him, the muscles in his legs pulled taut and presenting themselves. I think it was a mistake in his making, but one that suited him. Now in the kitchen he clicked and clucked, his tongue for the moment giving up speech, and I said

  –Enjoy, Father. See you in the morning.

  The twigs crackled orange when I tossed them in the stove. Made the kitchen tiles look flushed like too-warm cheeks.

  An hour or so went by and the storm grew and grew and I was too restless to say inside. I went out to the porch, and so I saw him when he came. I saw him come out of the trees. Bobbing ball of white which was his shirt catching the occasional sliver of moonlight. He staggered a little side to side with the wind and his boots heavy with mud. He looked cautiously toward the house and I waved my arms over my head so he could see me through the rain.

  He’d a jacket on over his shirt but he’d left the jacket open and it was all wet through.

  –Come in for a minute, to dry.

  –Your father?

  –He’s out. We’ll be gone before he’s back.

  If he wondered at Father being out he didn’t say. Probably he was too cold to question why I’d lied.

  I brought him into the kitchen and he went straight to the stove, shivering. The back of his neck shone gold and smooth in the half-light of the stove and I put my mouth there, my hands on his back, high on the balls of my feet. He turned his head a little and I rested my cheek against him.

  –You all right?

  –I just need to do one thing before we go.

  I made for the patio door. He’d cupped his hands to his mouth and looked at me over his braided fingers.

  –I want to say goodbye to the garden.

  His eyes narrowed a little.

  –It’s where I played as a child.

  And when
I put out my hand he took it, and together we went out the back door.

  The rain was so loud, the wind so high, that he put his arm up over his face. We walked over The Burial Patch, stopped just short of the lawn with its grass thick and wet.

  Jeremy Loan

  One thing I do remember, and I feel silly bringing it up.

  When I was young and my mother needed her ulcer seen to, we went to the house. Miss Ada and I looked to be ’round the same age then and we went outside and … Like I say. Sounds silly. She got me to lie on top of her. I didn’t know what she wanted right away, and when I realised I couldn’t – she’d nothing there. And … her eyes. When she realised. I got up and ran away. I knew by her eyes. She was going to eat me. I thought If I don’t get away she’ll eat me. If she can’t have me one way she’ll have me another.

  When I pushed him, I couldn’t tell if he made a sound.

  He fell to his knees and looked back at me, his face knotted against the rain. His hands and knees sucked a half-inch into The Ground, quickly turned black-brown.

  He was irked, confused and cold. There was a quick stir in my chest, which was the urge to help him up. To stop it while I could. The jacket looked like an animal pelt draped over him.

  And then, The Ground started taking him. It opened just enough to swallow his legs to his waist so he was upright, looking all around him, trying to put his hands down flat but of course he couldn’t take hold.

  I could tell it liked the taste of him because it took him so slow.

  I hopped onto a stone when he reached for me, and quickly he started reaching for the earth again, trying to pull himself out. Handful of mud after handful of mud, and his face, still so beautiful with the horror run through it.

  –I can’t leave, and you can’t stay. The Ground will keep you safe.

  His head back, mouth open. Screaming.

  –And we’ll be better suited, once you rise.

  His eyes going left and right, up and down. His face an almond-coloured pool in the black mud, his ears filling.

  –She won’t find you here. And The Ground will take your hurt away, all the hurt she put inside you.

  His curls. Flecked with nutmeg shavings. His cheekbones. The lips that had been on mine. I squatted, touched his face, said