by John Saul
A shadow fell over Miranda’s eyes. Rosemary noticed for the first time that she was clasping her hands nervously together.
They were the hands of an old woman, the skin as translucent as parchment, covered with a network of fine wrinkles. Dark brown spots were scattered over their backs, and the fingers seemed permanently bent. She’s an old woman, Rosemary thought. So old. But it was impossible. Surely Miranda Sikes couldn’t be much past forty.
As if she felt Rosemary’s eyes on them, Miranda’s hands suddenly disappeared into the folds of her long black skirt. “I wanted to talk to you about Cassandra,” she said. “I wanted to tell you that she’s going to come to see me.”
Rosemary’s jaw sagged dumbly. “She’s spoken to you?” she asked, her voice hollow. “I didn’t know—”
“She hasn’t spoken to me,” Miranda interrupted, as if she’d read Rosemary’s mind. “But she wants to talk to me. She wants to know who I am.”
Rosemary shook her head uncomprehendingly. “I—I’m afraid I don’t understand.…”
“She’s going to come tomorrow,” Miranda went on. Her eyes took on a faraway look, and she nodded slightly. “Yes, tomorrow. I hope you will let her.”
Rosemary’s confusion only deepened. Tomorrow? How could Miranda know what was going to happen tomorrow, unless she’d already talked to Cassie? What did Miranda want of her stepdaughter? Rosemary felt a shiver of foreboding pass through her. “What is it?” she pressed. “What is it about Cassie? Why do you want to see her?”
Miranda’s eyes met Rosemary’s, but she did not answer. She turned away then, and started slowly out of the shop.
Rosemary stood frozen where she was for a moment, trying to absorb the strange words the woman had uttered. And then, without thinking, she spoke. “Miranda!”
Miranda stopped and turned back.
“Miranda,” Rosemary asked, “is something wrong with Cassie?”
For a moment Miranda said nothing, then she shook her head. “No,” she said in a voice that was oddly empty. “Nothing’s wrong with her. But she belongs to me.” She fell silent for a moment, then smiled again. “Yes,” she repeated. “She belongs to me.” Then she turned away again, and left the shop. Outside she removed the black shawl from the shopping cart and carefully wrapped it around her head. Without looking back, she started down the sidewalk, pushing the shopping cart in front of her.
The memory of that strange visit had hung over Rosemary all the rest of that day, and last night she’d found herself watching Cassie.
Perhaps it had been meaningless. Perhaps Miranda was—as everyone thought she was—only harmlessly daft.
But what had she meant? Cassie belonged to her? It was crazy!
She had said nothing the night before, unwilling to try to talk to Keith about it and knowing that to Cassie none of it could possibly make any sense. But still, before Cassie had gone up to her room for the night, Rosemary had asked her what her plans were for the weekend.
Cassie looked at her disinterestedly. “I don’t know,” she’d said at last. “I don’t have any, really. I guess I’ll just study.”
Then she hasn’t talked to Miranda, Rosemary had thought. So it probably doesn’t mean a thing. Still, she’d been unable to sleep last night.
It was nearly nine when Rosemary finally went downstairs. She found Keith sitting at the kitchen table, working on a crossword puzzle. There was no sign of either Cassie or Jennifer.
“Where are the girls?” she asked as she poured herself a cup of coffee and settled into the chair opposite her husband.
He glanced up from his paper, shrugging. “The beach,” he said. “Cassie was going by herself, but Jennifer made such a nuisance of herself—”
“The beach?” Rosemary echoed hollowly. “Did—did she say why?”
Keith grinned at her. “Why do kids ever go to the beach?” he countered.
But Rosemary knew Cassie hadn’t gone to the beach at all.
It was the marsh.
The marsh where Miranda lived.
The fear that had been flitting around the edges of her consciousness ever since Cassie had come to False Harbor suddenly coalesced into a tight knot in her stomach. Her hands shaking, Rosemary tried to pour herself a cup of coffee.
It spilled over the rim, scalding her hands.
Chapter 9
There was a sharp bite to the morning air, but the sky was a deep cloudless blue and the morning sun made the sea sparkle as if it had been scattered with millions of tiny diamonds. A strong wind was blowing in from the east, and a heavy surf was building, the swells close together, so the beach resounded with a steady din of crashing water. There were birds everywhere—gulls and sandpipers covered the beach. A flock of ducks churned over the marsh, rising as one into the air, circling, then dropping back down into the reeds to continue feeding. As Cassie and Jennifer walked along the hard-packed sand, staying just above the highest reach of the surf, the sandpipers skittered out of their way, opening a path before them then closing it again after they’d passed. Jennifer stopped short, clutching at Cassie’s hand. “Look!”
From the south, barely visible above the horizon, Cassie could make out a faint line. “What is it?”
“Geese,” Jennifer explained. “Sometimes they stop in the marsh.”
The birds flew steadily toward them, and Cassie watched, fascinated by the perfect formation. As they drew nearer she could make out the individual birds, their necks stretched out straight, their feet tucked up under their bodies, their wings beating steadily in an almost hypnotic rhythm. By the time the formation reached the coast, everything else in Cassie’s consciousness had faded away and she found herself imagining that she was with them, riding on the wind, looking down on the sparkling expanse of water and the thin strip of beach along its edge.
The big Canada geese were flying low, and as they came across the surf line, Cassie could hear the rush of air across their wings and almost feel it on her brow. Her whole body began to tingle with excitement. Then, as if giving a signal, the bird at the center of the V-formation honked loudly and veered off to the left. In perfect synchronization the rest of the flock banked to follow, then the formation suddenly broke as the geese lost altitude, braked in midair, and plummeted into the marsh in a cacophony of flapping wings and excited honkings. Even after they had disappeared from her sight completely, Cassie gazed out over the marsh, the image of the magnificent birds still vivid in her mind. Then, in the distance, she saw something else.
Far out on the rise in the middle of the marsh, Miranda was standing on the porch of her cabin. Though the distance was far too great for Cassie to see clearly, she knew that Miranda, too, had been watching the geese.
Now Miranda was watching her.
Watching her, and silently calling to her.
Already Cassie could feel the first stirrings of the strange force within her, drawing her toward the marsh.
“Isn’t it neat?” Jennifer said excitedly, totally unaware of the strange feeling that had come over Cassie. “By next week there’ll be so many of them you can hardly believe it. They just keep coming in, and then one day they all take off. They’re going up to Canada, and after they’re gone there won’t be any more until fall.” Her eyes widened in wonder as she gazed at the marsh. “How can they do it? How can they fly that far?”
Vaguely, Cassie heard Jennifer speaking, but her eyes never left the figure on the porch of the little cabin, and she made no reply.
Finally Jennifer looked anxiously up at Cassie. “Cassie? Is something wrong?”
“Look,” Cassie said quietly. “Look out there.”
Puzzled, Jennifer followed the older girl’s gaze, and then gasped with sudden alarm. “It’s Miranda,” she breathed. “Don’t look at her, Cassie.”
But Cassie seemed not to hear her. She took a step forward.
Sumi, who had followed them from the house and was now sitting quietly at her feet, suddenly leaped to his feet and darted ahead, his
tail twitching.
Jennifer’s heart began to beat faster as she realized what Cassie had in mind.
“Cassie?” she called. “Cassie, what are you doing?”
Jennifer’s voice sounded to Cassie as if it was coming from far away. In her mind, Cassie could hear another voice—Miranda’s voice—calling to her.
She had to answer that call—she had to!
She took a step forward, then felt something tugging at her. Almost in a trance now, she looked down to see Jennifer clutching at her arm, trying to hold her back.
“I have to go out there,” she said softly. “She wants me.”
“No!” Jennifer protested. “You can’t go out there. It’s dangerous, and Miranda’s crazy, and—” She fell silent as she saw the strange faraway look that had come into Cassie’s eyes.
“She isn’t crazy,” Cassie breathed. “And you can’t keep me from going out there. Nobody can.”
With a short gasp, Jennifer dropped Cassie’s arm and backed away. “B-but you’ll get lost,” she whispered in a final attempt to change her halfsister’s mind.
Cassie only shook her head. “Sumi knows the way. He’ll show me. Look.” A few yards away the cat had stopped and turned around, his eyes fixing on Cassie. His tail twitched impatiently and he uttered a loud meow.
Jennifer backed farther away, her heart thumping now. Cassie took a step toward the frightened child, but when Jennifer shrank back from her, she turned away and began following Sumi along the beach. Jennifer stayed where she was, too afraid to follow, until Cassie was fifty yards away from her. Then her curiosity overcame her fear, and she timidly started after her halfsister.
Sumi angled across the beach, loping easily up the gentle rise of the low dune. He disappeared over the crest, but a moment later Cassie spotted him ranging back and forth at the very edge of the marsh, his tail once again twitching as if to signal her. She moved faster then. When she was within a few feet of Sumi, the cat turned and bounded down one of the narrow paths that led into the tangle of tall grasses and reeds. Cassie hesitated only a second, then followed.
Jennifer stopped short at the edge of the marsh. She stared fearfully at the oozing black water. Visions of slithering snakes and huge spiders made her skin crawl.
“Cassie?” she called out, her voice sounding small and lost against the cries of the birds and the muffled roar of the surf. “Cassie, don’t …”
But Cassie was gone, already lost from Jennifer’s view. She paused for a moment, trying to decide what to do. Should she go home and tell her parents what Cassie was doing? But that was tattling, wasn’t it?
Then she had an idea. She wouldn’t go into the marsh, but at least she knew a place where she could watch. Her fear easing slightly, she turned and started running down the beach.
Lisa Chambers and Allayne Garvey walked along Oak Street, which skirted the marsh from Bay Street all the way to Cape Drive. It was one of the prettiest streets in False Harbor, for before the village had been laid out, Oak Street had been a cow path that wound along the edge of the wetlands. When the town fathers had laid out a more formal structure of streets, Oak Street’s route was allowed to follow the natural contours of the land, as the path had always done, instead of being forced into the puritan uniformity of the rigid grid upon which the rest of the village streets had been surveyed. On both sides of the gently curving road, rows of giant oaks had spread their branches wide. Near the end of the street a strip of the marsh had been reclaimed in the early part of the century to form a grassy park, dotted now with picnic tables, swings, and teeter-totters.
All the beauty of the street was lost on Lisa, however, for her mind was totally occupied with her fury toward Cassie Winslow.
“I don’t see why Eric wants to walk her to school every day,” she complained, kicking sullenly at an empty Coke can that lay next to one of the trash barrels. “Doesn’t he even care what people think?”
“What’s he supposed to do?” Allayne argued. “Cross the street every time he sees her?”
“Well, why shouldn’t he? She’s not part of our group, and she never will be.” She stopped in mid-step and turned to face Allayne. “Mom doesn’t think she has any class at all, and nobody even knows where her mother came from.”
Allayne’s eyes rolled, and she started tuning Lisa’s voice out. There wasn’t much she hadn’t already heard about Lisa’s own family, and how old it was, and how important. But Allayne knew perfectly well that outside of False Harbor nobody had ever heard of the Chamberses or the Smythes or the Maynards. Nor, for that matter, had they heard of the Garveys, either, and Allayne’s family had been around at least as long as any of the others. It was just that in her family, the kind of haughty pride the Chamberses displayed was known as arrogance. “Most of the founding fathers were a pretty sleazy bunch anyway,” her father always said. “Stealing the land from the Indians, then snooping on their neighbors all the time. And we all think that just because we haven’t had the gumption to get out of here, we’re something special. The only special person we have around here is Miranda Sikes, and nobody will even talk to her.”
“Including you,” Allayne had pointed out, but her father had only dismissed her words with a wave of his hand.
When Allayne had asked him what was special about Miranda Sikes, he’d shaken his head and replied, “If you want to find that out, maybe you ought to go out there and see.” Ever since, Allayne had thought about his words and wondered if he was really serious. She also wondered if she’d ever work up the courage to take up his challenge.
Now, as Lisa Chambers’s voice droned on, Allayne sighed and glanced at the park in the hopes of finding something that might divert Lisa from her monologue of complaints about Cassie Winslow. Almost immediately she found something. Standing on one of the picnic tables, staring into the marsh, she saw Jennifer Winslow. Allayne watched the little girl for a few seconds, and when she didn’t move, gently nudged Lisa. “Look,” she said quietly.
Lisa, annoyed at being interrupted, looked irritably toward Jennifer. “So what?” she asked.
“What’s she doing? There must be something in the marsh.”
“Birds,” Lisa said. “That’s all that’s ever in the marsh. Why don’t we go down to the drugstore and get a Coke?”
But Allayne ignored Lisa’s words. “I think she’s watching something,” she said. “Come on, let’s find out what it is.” She veered off the sidewalk into the park, and after a moment Lisa followed her. “Jennifer?” Allayne called.
Startled, Jennifer jumped, then turned to face them. She looked almost frightened, but as she recognized Allayne, who had been her favorite baby-sitter before Cassie arrived, her expression eased.
“Jen?” Allayne asked. “Is something wrong?”
“It’s Cassie,” Jennifer breathed. “Look.”
She pointed out into the marsh, and a second later Allayne and Lisa saw what the child had been watching.
Far out in the marsh, maybe two hundred and fifty yards away, they could see a figure moving quickly through the weeds.
“But what’s she doing out there?” Allayne asked. “Doesn’t she know it’s dangerous?”
“I told her,” Jennifer said solemnly. “But she wouldn’t listen to me.”
“She’s crazy,” Lisa Chambers pronounced. “She doesn’t know anything about the marsh.”
“She isn’t either crazy,” Jennifer shot back.
“Isn’t she?” Lisa taunted. “Well, if she isn’t, what’s she doing out there?”
“She’s going to see Miranda!” Jennifer exclaimed without thinking, then clamped both hands over her mouth as if she could take back her words.
Lisa and Allayne stared at the little girl for a moment, and then suddenly understood. They looked out over the marsh once more, but this time they ignored Cassie, searching instead the low rise on which Miranda Sikes’s cabin stood starkly silhouetted in its scraggly grove of trees.
On the porch of the tiny house,
standing so still she might have been carved from stone, was Miranda.
A slow, cruel smile spread over Lisa Chambers’s face, and her eyes gleamed with malice. “I knew it,” she said quietly. “I told you so, didn’t I? She’s just as crazy as Miranda is!”
But Allayne, fascinated, said nothing, for in the wetlands beyond the park even the birds had suddenly fallen silent as Cassie slowly approached the strange cabin in the marsh.
Cassie was barely inside the grove of spindly pines when the hawk on the roof of Miranda’s cabin suddenly came to life, raising its head from beneath its wing to peer out into the surrounding swamplands. Then, as its eyes found Cassie, it rose up onto its feet, its wings flapping noisily.
With a high-pitched scream of fury, the hawk rose up off the roof, its wings beating hard as it circled up into the cloudless blue of the sky.
Cassie watched as the bird flew higher and began to circle. She turned slowly, both fascinated and frightened by its graceful flight. Then, as she followed the bird’s path across the marsh, she saw the three figures in the park. For a split second she thought they were watching the hawk too. Suddenly, with a flash of anger, she realized that they weren’t staring at the hawk, but at her.
They were staring at her, and talking about her. She could almost hear the sneering words coming out of Lisa Chambers’s mouth. Her surge of anger grew, and for a moment she wished the hawk would see them, too, and know what they were saying, and stop them.
From high above her head another angry screech erupted from the hawk’s beak. Instantly, a flock of ducks burst from the reeds. Cassie froze, her heart suddenly beating faster as she remembered the terror she’d felt when she had first seen the bird rise from the roof in a frenzy of beating wings. But then she felt Miranda’s eyes upon her once more, and her fear began to abate.
Cassie braced herself, certain that the bird was about to plunge down to attack her.
Instead the white hawk shot away to the east, passing over Cassie’s head, blotting out the sun. As Cassie watched it, unable to move, it circled above the park. Then it dove downward.