The Grace Year

by Kim Liggett

  “My mercy has run out.”

  “Wait,” I say, trying to get her attention. “I can try. What do you want me to do? Take off my clothes, howl at the moon? Do you want me to put my hand in the fire, roll around in sumac?”

  “Do you hear something?” she says mockingly, swatting the air in front of her. “There’s an annoying gnat buzzing in my ear.”

  “Or I’ll take the punishment. Do you want a finger … an ear … my braid? I’ll do whatever you want, but don’t make me—”

  “Get rid of her.”

  Without hesitation, the girls pick up the rocks from around the fire pit and start pelting them at me. One whizzes right past me, narrowly missing my temple, and I take off.

  Stinging branches whip at my skin as I fight my way through dense foliage. I look up at the sky to get my bearings, but the moon and stars are hidden beneath the clouds as if they can’t bear to lay witness. I’m running when something grabs me by my skirts. I start swinging my fists wildly but only make contact with a thicket. I’m trying to untangle myself when I hear it behind me. Or maybe it’s right next to me. Is it a ghost, trying to take over my body? Or a wild animal starved for human flesh? Whatever it is, it’s something I can feel over every inch of my skin. Something watching me.

  Yanking my skirt free, I take off running in the opposite direction—at least I think it’s the opposite direction. My heart is pounding, my limbs are burning with the strain, but my head is empty, some deeper part of me taking over.

  I’m pummeling through the darkness, running blind, for what feels like hours, until I hit something solid.

  Stunned from the impact, I stagger back; shocks of blunt pain ricochet through my limbs. At first I think I must’ve run into a giant tree, but when I reach out to touch it, it’s too smooth, like it’s been stripped clean.

  “The fence,” I whisper. Sinking down next to it, I’m happy to find something familiar. Something to anchor me to reality. As the heat of my escape quickly leaves me, the chill sinks in. I’m pulling my cloak tighter around me when I hear heavy breathing. I’m hoping it’s my own, but when I place my hands over my mouth, it’s still present, steady as the grandfather clock in our front hall.

  “Is that you?” I whisper through my trembling fingers.

  There’s no reply, but I swear I can feel the heat from the poacher’s body seeping through the cracks in the wood. It’s the same feeling I had when I first encountered him on the trail.

  “Why didn’t you kill me?” I ask, pressing my palms to the fence. “Twice you’ve let me go.”

  I listen closely. There’s a sound of a blade being released from a sheath.

  “You won’t hurt me,” I whisper, resting my cheek against the splintery wood. “I know it.”

  As the cloud cover breaks, unveiling a full moon and a swath of bright stars, a blade comes shooting through the narrow gap in the fence, nicking my chin.

  I jump to my feet. The sudden movement makes me dizzy, or maybe it’s the warm blood coursing down my throat. As the glint of steel recedes, I peer inside the slit to find cold, dark eyes staring back at me. His breath is so loud in my ears now that it’s all I can hear. I stagger back a few steps before the world tips on end, sending me crashing to the cold hard ground, a veil of darkness spreading over me like a thick lead blanket.

  WINTER

  Glittering bony branches hulk and sway above me. My breath hangs heavy in the air. Propping myself up to get a look at my surroundings, I flinch as the harsh wind hits my chin. I touch it—the sticky clotting of blood, the dirt caked beneath my nails, stinging the cut.

  “Last night really happened,” I whisper.

  Peering through the gap in the fence where the blade came through, I can’t believe I thought he wouldn’t hurt me. I don’t hear the breathing anymore, but I’m not going to get close enough to be certain. Father said that was one of my best traits: I didn’t need to learn a lesson twice. Maybe the poacher assumed I was dead and moved on. The idea of him watching me while I lay there unconscious, bleeding, makes me sick to my stomach.

  Staring into the dense forest, separating me from the camp, I know what I have to do. Ghosts or not, I won’t last another day without water. Even thinking about it makes my tongue ache. The animals must be drinking from somewhere.

  As I get to my feet, the dizziness sets back in. I have to lean over and brace my hands against my knees to get the world to stop spinning. I’m thinking I need to throw up, but I only dry-heave a few times. There’s nothing in there. Not even spit.

  Holding on to a sapling for balance, I take my first step back into the woods. The wind rustles through the high branches, making me shiver. Even the sound of the ground cover crunching beneath my boots feels sinister.

  I used to love the woods. I’d spend every moment of my free time exploring the depths of hidden treasures, but this is different.

  A bird lets out a shriek of warning. And I can’t help wondering if the warning is for the other birds or for me.

  “I am my father’s daughter,” I whisper, straightening my spine. I believe in medicine. In facts. In truths. I will not get caught up in superstition. Maybe the ghosts are something you have to believe in for them to hurt you. I need to think that way, because right now my nerves are dangling by a thread.

  I have no idea where I am, how far I got from the camp last night, but as I look up to get my bearings, the sky is no help. It looks like it’s been smeared with river clay—a drab, endless swath of pewter. Back home, I hardly thought about the sun, but out here, it’s everything.

  When it briefly pops out, I rush to a spot where it’s beaming down, longing to feel it on my skin, but by the time I reach it, it’s gone. It feels personal now, like Eve is toying with me.

  As I crawl over a large cluster of limestone to try to catch another beam of light, I spot a patch of bright green algae clinging to the edge of a small pool of water. Just the sight of it makes my throat burn with thirst. How long has it been since I’ve had something to drink? Hours … days … I can’t recall. But as I move toward it, I catch something. A swish of a tail. There’s a creature hunched beside the pond. It raises its head—two beady black eyes glare back at me. I recognize the perky ears, the pointed nose, the copper coloring of its fur—but there’s something wrong. Blinking hard, I see a fox, but it looks as if someone’s painted a bright red smiley face over its mouth and whiskers. I’ve heard the rumors that the animals are mad in the woods, but when I look closer, I see the small rabbit splayed open at its feet. Blood oozes into the stagnant pool like a pot of ink tipped over in the rain.

  My stomach lurches. My head feels so light, like it could float off my body at any moment. Pressing my face against the cool mossy stone, I try to get hold of myself. “You’re okay. It will pass.” I think about waiting for the fox to leave, drinking the bloody water, but as a breeze passes over me, I follow it up a steep incline, and remember my mother telling me that water is best when collected high on the spring. And that water had to come from somewhere.

  Following the faint trickling sound, I use the holly bushes to guide me up the wooded hill, but every time I grab them, the points prick my fingers. My feet are unsteady. My vision blurs to the point that I have to stop every few yards to gain my composure, but when I finally reach the top, I’m met with the most welcome sight—water gushing through the limestone, forming a small deep pool. The water looks crystal clear, no sign of the algae … or blood … but I need to be careful. It’s hard to know what’s real anymore. Crawling toward the surface, I lean over, sinking my hands into the frigid water, scooping it into my mouth. Most of it dribbles down my chin, soaking my dress, but I don’t care. It tastes clean—nothing like the water from the well.

  As I go in for another drink, I see something twitch at the bottom of the pool. Clinging between two large rocks, there’s a cluster of dark shells that look like rolled-up shoe leather. Mollusks of some kind.

  I know I could catch my death going in after th
em, but I might very well die from hunger if I don’t. Stripping off my clothes, I try to ease into the water at first, but every inch feels like I’m being skinned alive. Letting out three short pants, I plunge my entire body under the water. The shock seems to revive me a bit, making me move a little quicker. I pry two of them loose, but there’s one that’s really rooted in there. As I come up for air, I place the two shells on the edge and hop out to grab a jagged rock. The air feels so nice and warm that I don’t want to go back under again, but I need as much food as I can get.

  Diving back under the surface, I’m digging the rock into the crevice, trying to pry the third one free, when I think of a time my father took me to the big river. I was so keen on catching my first fish. First line in, I caught a beautiful rainbow trout. It fought so hard that it took all my strength to reel it in. Even when I got it to the shore, it flipped its body all over the place, thrashing its head from side to side, and when I went to hit it with a stick, my father unhooked it and threw it back in. “You have to respect something that wants to live that bad,” he said. I remember being furious at him, but I understand it now.

  This little one isn’t ready to give in. And neither am I.

  Pushing back to the surface, I pull myself out of the spring, grab my clothes, and immediately start working on the two shells I harvested, but I’m shivering so hard I can barely hold on to the rock. “Breathe, Tierney,” I whisper.

  Pulling up the hood of my cloak, I sink into a tight ball, blowing hot air into the gap until the feeling comes back in my fingers.

  Trying it once again, with steady hands, I use the rock to gently pry open the shell. The cream-colored flesh, the pinks and blues and grays lining the inside of the shell—I don’t know exactly what it is, but it’s some kind of mussel or clam. I poke it and it flinches. At home, we’d slurp these down as quickly as possible so we wouldn’t have to taste them, but I want to taste it. I want to taste anything other than bile. I only hope I can keep it down. Carefully separating the mussel from the shell, I take it in. I chew every bit of it, savoring it all the way to the very last drop of murky liquid. I wanted to save the other one for later, but I can’t wait. Prying it open, I suck the mussel into my mouth, and immediately bite down on something hard. I’m thinking it’s just a piece of shell that broke off, but as I spit it out into my hand, I realize it’s a river clam pearl, just like the ones from my veiling day dress. Turning it over in my hand, I study every facet, every hint of iridescent color, every dent and rise. These are rare. And now I have two. I put it in my pocket, nestling it with the one June gave me. Maybe when I get home I can give these to Clara and Penny. And I realize that’s the first time in months I’ve even thought about going home—about getting out of here alive.

  A light brushing sound grabs my attention. It’s too soft to be leaves. There’s something about it that reminds me of home.

  Climbing to the top of the ridge, above the spring, I find a wide plateau, covered in the shriveled remains of weeds, a tiny pop of color on the right side.

  As I walk toward it, I’m trying not to get too carried away, but what if it’s the flower from my dream?

  Getting on my hands and knees, I see it’s not the flower but the frayed end of a red ribbon. A surge of excitement rushes through me. If other grace year girls were here … if they survived the wood … then so can I.

  I tug on the strand, but it seems to be stuck on something. As I adjust my body so I can pull it up with a little more force, I feel something crunch beneath my knee. It’s an unnatural sound, like a broken piece of china. Pushing away the dead weeds and clumps of dirt, I find something solid. I’m trying to figure out what it is when my thumb jams through a hole in the rock.

  Only it’s not a hole … and this isn’t a rock.

  It’s a human skull with molars still attached.

  The red ribbon garroted around the neck bones.

  My stomach tightens into a hard knot. Dropping the skull to the ground, I frantically try to cover it back up with dirt, but all I can think about is the girls who went into the woods and never came back.

  Maybe the ghost stories are true.

  Wanting to put as much distance as I can between myself and whatever dark truth lies at the top of the ridge, I careen down the hill and immediately lose my footing, rolling the rest of the way down, bashing into a rotting tree stump. I’m lying on my back, staring up at the vast sky. There’s a part of me that wonders if I’m already dead. If those are my bones. Maybe a hundred years have passed in the blink of an eye and I’m nothing but a shadow now. But as my vision slowly comes back into focus, so does the pain. Being dead shouldn’t hurt this much. Using a tangle of exposed roots, I pull myself up. It takes a few minutes for my brain to catch up with my body, but I don’t have time to give in to whatever this is. The sun is beginning to wane.

  The smell of oats burning in a cast-iron skillet draws me back toward the camp. I try to mark my path the best I can so I can find my way back to the spring, if need be. Settling in an evergreen near the perimeter, I watch them in the clearing, laughing, carrying on—as if they don’t have a care in the world. They’re happy I’m gone. I don’t know if it’s jealousy talking or my imagination gone askew, but there’s something about them that reminds me of the trappers coming back from the outskirts, hopped up on hemlock silt, reeking of mischief. It’s hard to believe that just a few days ago, I was one of them. It feels like a world away.

  Gertrude walks across the clearing, the back of her head glistening in the dying light. I’m leaning forward to see if I can somehow get her attention, tell her I’m all right, when one of the branches snaps beneath me. It gets Gertie’s attention, but unfortunately, it gets Kiersten’s, as well.

  I’m balancing my weight, trying not to make another sound, as the girls gravitate to the edge of the clearing.

  “It’s a ghost,” Jenna whispers.

  “Maybe it’s Tierney,” Helen says, nuzzling Dovey under her chin. “Looking for revenge.”

  “She wouldn’t dare come back here, dead or alive,” Kiersten says, narrowing her eyes. “There’s a lot more I can cut off of Gertie if she decides to test me.”

  And I swear she’s staring right at me, like she’s whispering directly in my ear.

  Jumping down, I back away from the tree … from Kiersten’s eyes, and retreat into the woods.

  Like a ghost, I walk through the night.

  I don’t know where I am … where I’m going, but I’m not lost, because there’s no one looking for me. Nowhere to go. I thought being with the girls at the camp, watching them slowly slip into madness, was the loneliest I could ever feel.

  I was wrong.

  I spend my days memorizing the woods, cutting new paths, looking for food, and in the evenings, I batten down wherever I can, under a fallen log, a rain-whipped hollow in a rock, but I never stay in the same place twice. The abundance of animal tracks lets me know I’m not alone in here, and by the size of the prints, I can tell there are much more frightening things in here than ghosts.

  The only upside is that being away from the camp seems to have given me some clarity. I still get dizzy from time to time, but I don’t feel as unhinged, as if the earth might open up and swallow me whole. Maybe just being around each other is what’s making the sickness spread. A poison of the mind.

  Other than a lucked-upon scavenged root, or the occasional acorn a squirrel gave up on, I haven’t eaten in weeks. My stomach doesn’t growl anymore. It doesn’t even hurt. When I take in a deep breath, I imagine the air filling me up, sustaining me. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but it seems to be enough.

  Occasionally, I get a whiff of chicory water or fatty meat roasting over an open flame, but I know the girls don’t have anything like that in the camp. Even if they did, they’re not in the right frame of mind to pull off a meal like that.

  I follow the scent all the way to the fence. There’s a part of me that wants to claw my way over the barrier to get to it, but m
aybe that’s how they’ll lure me out. Or maybe it’s my mind playing tricks on me.

  Father had a patient a few years ago who insisted he smelled dandelion greens in the dead of winter. That was right before something exploded inside his head and he bled out.

  “No.” I give my braid a hard tug. I need to stay focused—steer clear of the fence. I don’t care that the girl from my dreams led me here.

  I know enough from eavesdropping on the fur trappers returning from the wilds to understand that the real enemy out here isn’t the wildlife or even the elements, it’s your own mind. I always thought of myself as such a solitary creature—oh, how I longed to be alone—but I didn’t realize until I got out here how much of that is false. Something I told myself to feel strong … better than the rest. I spent most of my life watching people, judging them, sorting them into some category or another, because it kept the focus off myself. I wonder what I’d see if I came across Tierney James today. And now I’m talking about myself in the third person.

  I try to stay busy, but it’s harder than one might think. When I feel myself drifting to that shadowy realm behind my mind’s eye, that place of doubt and blame, guilt and remorse, I pull myself back with little tasks. I weave a rope so I can pull myself up the incline easier. I remember Michael and I doing that a few summers back so we could reach the bluff over Turtle Pond. I’ll never forget that feeling, leaping off the ridge into nothing but air, hitting the cool water with a tremendous splash.

  Thinking about him hurts. I’m not pining after him like some veil-hungry schoolgirl. It hurts to think about how wrong I was about his feelings for me. It makes me wonder if I’ve been wrong about other things, too. Important things.

  Taking shelter from the wind behind a giant oak, I press my body against the bark. At first, it feels grounding, something to remind me that I’m still a human being, but my thoughts eventually turn into wondering if I’ll be petrified here, if I’ll become one with the tree. A hundred years from now people will pass by, and a girl will tug on her father’s sleeve. “Do you see the girl in the tree?” she’ll ask. And he’ll pat her on her head. “You have a grand imagination.” Maybe if she looks closely, she’ll be able to see me blink. If she places her palm against the bark, she’ll be able to feel my heart still beating.