Sawkill Girls

by Claire Legrand

  “Strange?” Marion breathed in and out. Each time, she felt more like herself. She faced the man with clear eyes.

  “Yes. I’d like to know if something frightened him.” The man folded his hands on top of her leg. A thick cotton blanket with satin trim covered her waist-to-toe, but still she jumped. She wanted, suddenly, to kick him away. “Did you see anything out of the ordinary?”

  A faint grinding noise started spiraling up the back of Marion’s skull, like the bow of a violin moving slow across one discordant string. She dug her finger in her ear. Something was stuck in there that needed to be dislodged.

  Something was trying to wake up.

  What a strange thought to have.

  “I didn’t . . .” She shook her head, trying to clear it. “Do you hear that?”

  The man was very still, watching her. Had he blinked even once? “Hear what?”

  It occurred to Marion that this man was sitting at her bedside with his hands resting on her leg, and she had not a clue who he was. She scooted away from him. He didn’t follow her. His hands sat limp on the mattress edge like a pair of fleshy crabs.

  “Who are you,” she asked, “and where am I?”

  The man did blink then, once, though his eyelids didn’t touch. A half blink. “These direct questions are wonderful. A positive sign. I’m Dr. Wayland. I’m the Mortimers’ family physician, and they asked that I check up on you.”

  A doctor. Marion’s shoulders relaxed. All right, that made sense.

  “What did you hear, Marion?” Dr. Wayland’s thumb stroked the edge of the mattress. “You mentioned hearing something. I wonder if you might describe it for me?”

  “How is she, Doctor—? Oh! Marion, sweetheart, you’re awake!” Pamela Althouse, kerchief tied around her head, looked smaller than usual as she hurried over to Marion, like a child hurrying to their mother after a bad dream. She crowded onto Marion’s bed.

  “Mom, I’m all right.”

  “I was so frightened, sweetheart. I thought—”

  Marion held her mother tightly. “I know what you thought.”

  Mrs. Althouse sagged gently against Marion’s side, with Marion bearing all the weight. Minutes passed, and then eons.

  “Mrs. Althouse,” came Dr. Wayland’s mild voice. “May I speak with you for a moment?”

  “Of course.” Mrs. Althouse kissed Marion’s head. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

  All of a sudden Marion’s skin felt hot enough to sear anything she touched. “No, you wouldn’t, would you? You wouldn’t go anywhere, not for long.”

  Because without me, Mother, what would you do?

  Without me, where would your sadness go?

  Marion curled her fingers around the edge of her blanket.

  “What?” Her mother’s brow furrowed. Dr. Wayland paused at the door—a still, watching, gray-and-cream bird.

  “Nothing.” Marion shook herself, disguised it with a yawn and a tight smile. “I’m just tired.”

  The adults escaped to the hallway, but before Marion could take two breaths, Charlotte appeared around the corner, with a girl Marion at first didn’t recognize at her side. Something about the girl’s penetrating blue gaze made Marion want to cover herself, even though she was wearing an utterly inoffensive T-shirt and half-covered in blankets.

  “There you are,” murmured Charlotte, a warm smile brightening her face. “You’re awake, my little starfish.”

  Charlotte crawled onto the bed next to Marion, and a knot constricting Marion’s heart loosened. Charlotte. This was good, this was wonderful. Because Marion remembered now that only minutes ago she’d been dreaming up a world in which Charlotte no longer existed.

  She turned her face into Charlotte’s neck, into the soft hollow of her throat, where the silver starfish charm lived. Charlotte had a wonderful smell, like clean laundry and clean skin, and the rose-scented perfume she sprayed on her wrists and throat every morning.

  Marion touched the silver starfish sitting on its chain around her own neck. “Remember when we got these?”

  Charlotte laughed softly. “God, how old were we?”

  “Thirteen and twelve. Come on. Don’t you remember?”

  “Four years is a long time.”

  Marion fell silent. Yes, four years was a long time. Four years ago, their father had still been alive. Four years ago, they had lived in a suburb of Boston, found two matching starfish necklaces at a cheesy jewelry kiosk in the mall, and exchanged them on Charlotte’s bed by the light of three candles, while reciting a “spell” they’d written after watching Practical Magic for the eighteenth time.

  “Not even death can part our souls,” twelve-year-old Marion had intoned, throwing rose petals into a yellow ceramic bowl they’d snuck up from the kitchen.

  Charlotte, giggling, had sprinkled sugar and salt and dirt from the rose garden over the petals. “Even when we’re rotting and full of holes.”

  “Don’t laugh!” Marion had scolded, stifling her own smile. She’d clasped the necklace around Charlotte’s neck. “Sisters two and sisters true.”

  “You love me,” Charlotte had concluded, fastening Marion’s necklace, “and I love you.”

  The memory made Marion’s throat close up, and suddenly that’s exactly what she wanted—to dig out their copy of Practical Magic and watch it from within the safe nest of Charlotte’s arms.

  But there was a girl sitting on the edge of her bed—a beautiful girl, pouty-lipped like a French model, clear-skinned like a starlet—and at the sight of her, Marion’s belly warmed, despite everything. Marion wanted her to go away, she wasn’t in a state fit for such beauty, but she couldn’t find the voice for it. That was a common affliction of hers—not being able to find the voice for things. Mountains couldn’t talk, anyway, could they? No, voices were for birds and wolves and the wild, wild wind. Mountains watched, taciturn and solemn and bearing the weight of the ancients, while the world careened and howled on by.

  “Who’s this?” Marion asked.

  The girl gave a small smile and extended her hand. “Val Mortimer. I was there, yesterday. You probably didn’t know.”

  Oh. Oh.

  A ferocious blush crept up Marion’s cheeks. Suddenly, her eyes filled with tears. She remembered people hovering around her, shouting her name. She remembered the pain cutting her head in two.

  She remembered the scream of her bones.

  Charlotte squeezed her hand. “Marion?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .” Val crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” They were Marion’s most frequently used words. She wiped a shaking hand across her eyes. “I, uh . . . Sorry. I recognize you now.”

  Val raised her eyebrows.

  Marion’s blush intensified. “You look a little different in person. Smaller. Not that you look fat in your photos or anything,” she added quickly. “Not that I looked at, like, a ton of photos, I just . . .”

  “We had to internet stalk you before we moved,” Charlotte told Val cheerfully. “Just a little bit.”

  Marion kept her arms board-stiff at her sides, resisting the urge to curl up into a sweaty ball of mortification.

  “Can’t really judge you,” Val replied, her mouth sliding into a smile so lovely that the word seemed inane to Marion. “Internet stalking is practically my avocation.”

  Charlotte laughed, touched Val’s leg with her toe.

  Marion leaned back against the pillows, watching them, listening to them chatter about Val’s boyfriend, about Charlotte’s clothes, about Val’s summer reading project, about Charlotte’s collection of classic children’s hardcovers.

  Their words slithered across the folds of Marion’s brain. Each slip and spill sent a shock of pain butting against her temples. She tilted her head left, then right. Maybe the buzz in her ears would roll right out of her ear and down her neck—a warm, wet phantom thing waking
up and then promptly exiting her body.

  “So what did you find out about me?” asked Val, toying with the white bedspread. She smiled up at Charlotte, glanced at Marion. Her eyes lingered on Marion’s face in a way that made Marion want to squirm. “When you were stalking me.”

  “Valerie Elise Mortimer,” recited Charlotte, in a faux English accent, which was good, because it made everyone laugh a little. “Eldest daughter of the richest family on Sawkill. Champion equestrian. Accepted to Yale, Harvard, Sarah Lawrence, Princeton, Brown. Ruler of the great manor house of Kingshead. Boss bitch. Et cetera.”

  Marion turned away from them—their laughter, their softness, their floral-scented nearness. Val had scooted closer, leaning into Charlotte like they were old friends, long used to huddling on beds and whispering secrets.

  Marion barely resisted the urge to grab Charlotte, pull her under the bedspread, and smother all her air away, so Val could have none of it for her own.

  Why couldn’t we have gone to a desert island instead? Marion wondered hopelessly, already aching with loneliness. She could see the future clearly: Valerie Mortimer, Charlotte’s new best friend. Far more interesting and appealing than Marion, with her nagging and her worrying and their dead father’s crooked smile, could ever be.

  Rolling over on her side, Marion closed her eyes. Quiet waves of agony pulsed through her head and down her spine. She dimly noticed the voices of her mother and Dr. Wayland murmuring in the hallway outside her room, along with a third voice that, via eavesdropping, Marion realized was Ms. Mortimer, Val’s mother.

  Silence, utter stillness, and then a shift against the mattress.

  “Are you all right?” Val’s quiet voice, closer now. “Charlotte’s getting you some more water. Is something hurting?”

  Honestly, Marion didn’t know what was wrong with her, but she knew she was tired and needed a shower. Her scalp itched; a greasy film coated her skin. She’d never been drunk, or high, because the idea of so grievously defying rules made her break out in hives. But the room was spinning and rocking, and Marion wondered if this was what it felt like, to be under the influence. If so, why would anyone do this to themselves?

  She pressed down on her temples. Hot swells of pain pulsed under her fingers. This beautiful girl was looking at her, was sitting warm and near, and Marion probably absolutely reeked.

  “After Dad died, Charlotte started sleeping in my bed,” she found herself saying, starting to panic a little, because the pain in her head was unlike anything she’d felt before, and because she was mortifyingly conscious of her oily hair. “I did that when we were little, slept in her bed. I was afraid of lightning, back then. Every time I saw lightning flash, I’d be afraid it would strike our house,” she kept saying, or maybe not-saying, who could really know? “Totally fry us. Did you ever wonder that? What do you think it feels like to be electrocuted?”

  “Well,” Val began, with a tone of Why oh why did I come into the crazy girl’s room?

  Marion cut her off, blushing madly. “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, I’d go into her room and she’d never get mad at me for waking her up. She’d let me wrap myself around her so tight, she’d call me her starfish, and I’d breathe her in until I calmed down. We traded starfish necklaces, made a spell for it. A sister spell. We’re not allowed to take the necklaces off, not ever. That’s what Charlotte decided. So no matter what, we’ll always be with each other. Cheesy, right? I love her for it.”

  A solid heat was building behind Marion’s eyelids, filling up her throat. “She’d comb my hair with her fingers, on those nights,” she whispered, because if she spoke any louder than that either she’d completely lose it and start sobbing, or the insect buzzing around in her head would know right where to find her and dive down for the sting. “Really smooth, over and over, until I fell asleep. Even if it took an hour for the storm to roll past and for me to calm down, she’d keep going. She never complained. Not once.”

  “That’s nice,” said Val, after a silence so long Marion wondered if she’d left the room without Marion noticing.

  “Yeah. And after Dad died, I wanted to do it again. But I couldn’t. Because Charlotte came to me instead. She cried on me, she needed me, every night. And then I had to be the one to comfort her. I never felt like it was okay for me to ask for help. Because she’d done it for me, when we were little. And now it was my turn, right? And somebody had to hold it together. Hold us together.”

  Marion closed her eyes. When they’d come over on the ferry the day before, she’d stared at the vastness of the choppy black sea beyond Sawkill. It had overwhelmed her. Always churning, never satisfied. There was something inherently malevolent about the sight of the ocean.

  That blackness was in her head now—moving, gnawing, unknowable. Shifting back and forth, crashing against the hard curve of her skull, carrying within it all manner of creatures not yet recorded by scientists. If she drilled down deep enough, right to the cold, dark floor, maybe she’d be the one to discover them.

  She pressed her fingers hard against her temples. Harder. She ground down in tight rapid circles. Brilliant electric supernovas spun behind her eyelids.

  “Hey,” said Val’s distant, dim voice. Gentle hands circled her wrists, tucked them down into the blankets. Soft fingers combed through Marion’s hair, cautious and slow.

  “Like this?” Val’s voice was hardly a whisper. “Is this what she would do? Is this all right?”

  With some astonishment, Marion realized she was crying. Her hair stuck to her neck in damp black sheets, but Val didn’t seem to mind. She turned over to face Val, but the waves in her head muddied everything. Val was a pulsing gold blur beside her on the pillows, lined in shuddering jagged black lines.

  Marion wished she were a painter, so that later she could re-create Val, and the strange golden-dark moment surrounding them.

  “Yes, thank you,” she said to Val, her eyes fluttering shut. Right before she fell asleep, Val’s fingers brushed against her cheek—careful and tender, like the slick-soft stretch of a bird’s wing. Marion leaned into her touch. “Just like that.”

  THE ROCK REGRETTED NOTHING.

  There was no room for regret when battling an invasion.

  Yet when the girl’s feet stepped off the boat and hit the shore, when the Rock felt her solid weight and knew at once that hers was a resilient spirit, one that could wake up others like her and bear the agony to come—there was a moment, a pang, of hesitation.

  As much as a rock could experience a pang, this one did.

  It did not relish tying an innocent to the burden of its ancient might.

  But the Rock required an infantry.

  Val

  The Child in the Woods

  It was the magic hour, everything soft and purple-limned, which was not a time during which Val preferred to venture into the woods. Something about the quiet clarity of twilight, how it transformed the colors around her into otherworldly shades—green to silver sage, blue to fairy moss, brown to underbelly black—twisted together her gut and heart, left her toes and fingers cold.

  But she was running late, so she reminded herself how unfairly gorgeous she looked in this lighting and plunged into the trees.

  Better to be uncomfortable than to keep him waiting any longer than she already had.

  They had made a deal, long ago: Val would meet him at the appointed time, three times a week, with no delays. And in return, he would not interfere with her daily schedule too terribly much.

  Her sandaled toes wedged under a tree root, and she stumbled. Bark scraped a slender stripe of skin off the top of her foot.

  “Shit,” she whispered, bending down to inspect it.

  “There you are!” A towheaded boy, his bright pink cheeks smudged with dirt, his khaki knees grass-stained, bounded out from between two bowed sycamores. He extended one pudgy hand. “I missed you!”

  Oh, God, she hated when he took this form.

  And he knew it. That cherubic smile beaming up
at her, those twinkling eyes. Oh yes, he knew, and delighted in it, and he was better at assuming shapes now than he had ever been. He was more solid, more believable. Once, details had been off, details that would have given him away—unblinking eyes, malformed words, arms held straight at his sides when he walked. In those days, years and years ago, he had hardly ventured out of the woods, much less the stones. So Val’s grandmother had told her.

  But he was growing more powerful. He was learning.

  The world had the Mortimer women to thank for that, for allowing him to exist outside the realm that had birthed him and to live in theirs instead.

  You’re welcome, world.

  Val hesitated, then took his hand. The boy wrapped his sticky fingers around hers, bone rubbing hard against bone, and led her deeper into the trees. Val bore the pain in silence. Her mother had done worse, many times.

  You must be strong, Valerie, her mother had said, her hands around Val’s young throat, her perfectly shadowed eyes daring Val to scream. He doesn’t take kindly to weaklings.

  “Sing to me?” the boy asked, plaintive.

  Val swallowed. “I don’t know if—”

  “Sing.” The boy turned hard blue eyes upon her. “I like it when you sing.”

  A sharp pain tugged Val’s stomach into a knot, and she complied at once, singing a song her grandmother had composed as a girl. Val had made the mistake of sharing it with him one day, when she was young and still thought this whole thing a fine game, a delightful secret between her and her mother: A beast from a hidden land who favored their family above all others. A beast who feared nothing except a Far Place where all life went to die, and of which they must never speak, if they wanted to keep him happy and calm.

  Ever since that day, when he’d first heard the song, he often requested it of her.

  It curdled Val’s insides to perform it for him.

  She knew her grandmother had kept it private all those years—private from him. Sylvia Mortimer’s own private morsel of self. So here she was, Val the traitor, singing her grandmother’s secret song. But there was no going back now.