The Grace Year

by Kim Liggett

  Sometimes I think I see hazy light spilling through the cracks in the wood; other times, it’s so dark that it feels as if I’m floating through space, unmoored from the gravity holding me to this earth.

  I try to keep track of time, but my mind is lost in shadow. In memories.

  I imagine it’s like being in the womb. The thrum of a heartbeat in the distance. The rushing sound of blood swirling all around me. I wasn’t allowed in the room for Clara’s birth because I hadn’t bled yet, but I was there for Penny’s. They say by your fifth, the baby just slides right out, but that’s not what I witnessed. I saw violence. Pain. The shifting of bones. I tried to turn away, but my mother grabbed me, pulling me close. “This is the real magic,” she whispered. At the time, I thought she was delirious, mad from exhaustion, but I wonder if she knew the truth. If she was trying to tell me something.

  I feel myself teetering on a razor’s edge, as if one grain of sand in the wrong direction could tip the scale, taking me down to the depths of nevermore, and yet I’m still here. I’m still breathing.

  Sometimes I talk just to hear the sound of my voice. To know that I still have a tongue. A throat. I ask questions—Who are you? Why haven’t you killed me—but they’re never answered. Instead, the poacher sings. Songs of old. Songs I’ve only heard on the breeze, a passing whistle escaping the trappers’ lips as they head back north. Or maybe he isn’t singing at all. Maybe he’s talking. Softly, the words bending in and out of my consciousness.

  “Drink,” he says, holding the cup to my lips.

  I’m trying to focus in on him, but it’s like smoke drifting through my fingers.

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Ten sunrises, nine moonfalls,” he says, adjusting the rolled-up fabric beneath my head. “It’s for the best, considering what I had to do to you.”

  I try to move my arms and my legs, just to know that I still have them, but it brings a fresh wave of pain.

  I remember the last time I was awake. The last time we spoke. He said my name.

  “How do you know my name?”

  “You need to drink.” He tilts the cup. It’s hard to swallow the sweet thick liquid. It’s hard to swallow at all. Like my body forgot how.

  But I can feel the poppy spreading through my chest, my limbs, making my eyelids feel as if they’ve been threaded with heavy cinder.

  “How do you know my name?” I ask again.

  I’m expecting nothing, but instead, a soft voice emanates from beneath his shroud. “That was a mistake.”

  I study him, the wide space between his eyes that gets knotted up … I always thought it was anger, hatred, but maybe I was wrong … maybe it’s concern.

  “Please,” I whisper. “We both know I’m probably not going to make it.”

  His eyes veer to my wound. “I never said that.”

  “You didn’t need to.”

  There’s a long unbearable pause. The heaviness that accompanies a deep, dark truth.

  With only the sound of the wind howling through the trees, the slow crackle of the fire, he says, “I knew who you were as soon as I saw your eyes … you have the same eyes.”

  “The girl from my dreams,” I say with a tight inhalation of breath, the memory of her coming back to me all at once. “You’ve seen her, too … who is she?”

  “What girl?” He places his inner wrist against my forehead. I want to flinch away from his touch, but his cold skin feels like a much-needed balm to my burning flesh. “Your father,” he says, staring down at me. “You have his eyes.”

  “My father?” I try to sit up, but the pain is too intense. I knew my father had been sneaking off to the outskirts for years, but I never imagined this. “Are we…?” I try to finish the sentence, but it feels like there’s a boulder in my throat. “Are we … relations?”

  “Brother and sister? No.” The poacher unwraps my bandage; his nostrils flare. Either the idea repulses him just as much as it repulses me, or it’s in response to the wound. Maybe both. “Your father’s not like that. He’s a good man.”

  “Then why?” I ask, fighting to stave off the lull of the poppy. “Why does he go there?”

  His eyes narrow on me. “You really don’t know?”

  I shake my head, but my skull feels like it’s full of heavy water.

  “He treats the women of the outskirts, the children … he saved Anders,” he says as he gently crushes herbs in a small stone vessel.

  “Anders?”

  He lets out a sigh, as if he’s mad at himself for saying too much. “You probably don’t remember, but he paid me a visit a few weeks ago.”

  “How could I forget.” I wince as he smears a dark green poultice over my wound. “You nearly smothered me to death.”

  His eyes turn cold. “That would’ve been a pleasure compared to what he would’ve done to you had he discovered you here.”

  Staring past him, at the empty glass bottles lined up on the table, I think about Tamara and Meg. The horrible things they did to them. A shiver runs through me.

  “We need to get this dirty ribbon away from—”

  “No.” I reach up, tucking the braid behind me. “The ribbon stays. The braid stays.”

  He lets out an irritated sigh. “Suit yourself.”

  “Who’s Anders?” I ask, trying to soften my tone.

  I can tell he’s reluctant to talk, but I just keep asking until he gives.

  “We grew up together,” he says as he wraps a fresh strip of linen around my shoulder. “Last hunting season, the prey tried to take him over the barrier, bit him, cursed his entire family. Everyone died, but your father was able to save him.”

  “My father saved a poacher?” I ask. “But he would be exiled if anyone found out about that, and my mother, my sisters, we would be—”

  “Of course that’s your highest concern,” he says, tying off the bandage tighter than need be.

  “I didn’t mean … it’s just … why? Why would he risk it?”

  “You still don’t get it,” he replies.

  A caw echoes through the woods, making us both flinch.

  “I don’t underst—”

  “I made a deal,” he says, pushing away from the bedside, strapping on his knives. “In exchange for Anders’s life, I promised that I would spare you if given the chance.”

  “But you stabbed me through the fence.”

  “I barely nicked you. You were getting too close … too comfortable.”

  “That night on the trail … the day I went over the barrier to help Gertrude,” I say, getting short of breath.

  “Honestly, if I’d known how much trouble you’d be, I would’ve thought twice,” he says as he tosses a cold wet rag in my direction. “But now he and I are even.” He blows out the candle and pulls back the door covering.

  “Wait. Where are you going?”

  “To do my job. What I should’ve been doing all along.”

  As I sit alone, shivering in the dark, I can’t help thinking about the hurtful things I said to my father before I left the county, the pain in his eyes when he entered the church with the veil. “Vaer sa snill, tilgi meg,” he whispered as he pressed the flower of my suitor into my hand.

  I always thought he taught me things because he was selfishly practicing for a son, but maybe it was for this, so I could survive my grace year. Maybe he did all of this … for me.

  Tears sting the back of my eyes. I want to get up and run, anything but sit here with my feelings, but as I get out of bed, my legs wobble as if they’re made from straw and putty. I stagger forward, grabbing the edge of the table to try to catch myself; it begins to tilt; the tiny glass bottles roll toward me, the knives begin to slide. I right it just in time before everything goes crashing to the floor. As I’m leaning over the table, trying to catch my breath, I spot a small notebook, wedged behind the worn leather satchel. I open it to find sketches of muscles and veins, skeletal structures, similar to the field notebooks my father keeps on his patients. But
when I turn to the last entry, I see a diagram of a girl—every mole, every scar, every blemish marked in great detail, from the brand of my father’s sigil on the bottom of my right foot all the way to the smallpox mark on my inner left thigh from a vaccination my father gave me last summer. This is a map of my skin, the small dashes indicating where he’ll cut. There’s even a detailed log planning out each piece of me that will go in each corresponding bottle. One hundred in all. A deep chill runs through my entire body.

  The poacher kept his word to my father. But like he said, they’re even now.

  Looking at the knives, the metal funnel, the pliers, the hammer—it turns my stomach.

  It’s entirely possible he’s simply preparing, just in case the infection takes me, but there’s an undeniable part of him that wishes me dead. I run my finger along the dotted lines of the sketch, and I can’t stop thinking about the fundamental rule of poaching, why they skin us alive instead of killing us first. The more pain, the more potent the flesh. I look down at the fresh blood seeping through the bandage. Maybe he hasn’t been helping my wound at all. Maybe he’s been making it worse so I can suffer as long as possible.

  I think about grabbing my cloak, taking my chances in the woods, but I’m in no condition.

  If I’m going to survive this, I need for him to see me not as an it, not as prey, but as a human being.

  But I’m not so naïve as to think I don’t need a backup plan.

  With trembling hands, I put back the bottles and the notebook and grab the smallest knife from the table. Dragging myself back to bed, I pull the thick pelts over me and slip the knife beneath the mattress, practicing pulling it out again and again, until I can no longer feel my arm. I want to stay up, wait for him, make sure he doesn’t get the jump on me, but my eyes are too heavy to hold.

  “Vaer sa snill, tilgi meg,” I whisper on the breeze, hoping it will carry my message straight to my father’s heart, but that’s magical thinking, something I don’t dare dabble in anymore.

  Instead, I vow to make it home, so I can tell him myself.

  I wake to the sound of breaking bones.

  Letting out a gasping breath, I start to reach for the knife, then realize the poacher’s clear across the room, sitting on a stool in front of the table, cutting away at something. I’m thinking the worst, wondering who it might be, when I catch a glimpse of a rabbit foot dangling over the edge of the table. Lurching to the side of the bed, I grab the pot, retching up everything in my stomach.

  He doesn’t even flinch.

  Wiping the bile from my mouth, I lean back on my makeshift pillow. “Is that where you go at night? To hunt?”

  He grunts out a reply. Could be yes. Could be no. He’s clearly not in a mood to chat, but I can’t let that stop me.

  “Is it just rabbit, or do you hunt other things?” I know the answer, but I want to hear him say it.

  He peers back at me, his eyes dark and narrow. “Whatever’s careless enough to get in my path.”

  “Prey,” I whisper, an icy current running through me. “That’s what you call us, right?”

  “Better than poachers,” he says as he returns to his work, snapping the neck.

  “Do you have a name?” I ask, trying to sit up, but the pain is still too much.

  “Other than poacher?” he replies dryly. “Yes. I have a name.”

  I’m waiting for him to tell me, but it never comes.

  “I’m not going to beg you.”

  “Good,” he says as he continues to work on the rabbit.

  The sound of his steady breath, the constant drip of the icicles on the eaves, it’s driving me crazy—alone in the woods kind of crazy—only I’m not alone.

  “Forget it,” I say with a heavy sigh as I turn my head toward the door.

  “It’s Ryker,” he says softly over his shoulder.

  “Ryker,” I repeat. “I knew that. I heard the other poacher call you that. It’s an old Viking name.” I perk up, trying to make a connection. “Det ere n fin kanin,” I say, but he doesn’t seem to understand.

  My shoulder is throbbing now. A sheen of cold sweat covers my body.

  “I think I could use some more medicine,” I say as pleasantly as possible.

  “No,” he replies, without even looking at me.

  “Why?” I blurt. “I’m in pain. Do you want me to be in pain … is that it?”

  He turns to me, peeling back the rabbit fur in one long continuous stroke, as casually as if he’s slipping off a silk stocking.

  “You don’t scare me,” I whisper.

  “Is that right?” he says as he drops the rabbit and abruptly gets up, blood staining his hands.

  As he sits next to me, I ease my hand down to the edge of the mattress, slipping my fingers beneath for the comfort of the blade, but there’s nothing there.

  “Looking for this?” he asks, pulling the small blade from the sheath strapped to his ankle. “The next time you get out of bed to rifle through my things, you should make sure you’re not leaving a trail of blood on the floor.”

  I reach out to hit him, but he catches my hand. “Save your energy. When you get well enough to return to the herd, you’re going to need it.”

  I’m struggling to pull my hand free.

  “You don’t need the poppy anymore,” he says as he releases me. “At this point, it will do more harm than good. It’s up to the Gods now. You’re either going to live or you’re going to die.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask, tears streaming down my face. “I saw the notebook. You fulfilled your promise to my father, many times over. Why haven’t you killed me yet or just let me die?”

  A deep ridge settles between his eyes. “I keep asking myself the same question,” he says, finally meeting my gaze. “But when I saw you … on the ice … you looked so…”

  “Helpless,” I whisper, disgusted and angry by the idea of that being what saved me.

  “No,” he says, his eyes glinting in the firelight. “Defiant. When you struck the ice with that axe … it was one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen.”

  Stark white light bleeds through the fluttering edge of the buffalo hide covering the door.

  “I see you survived another night,” he says as he stands over me, his clothes smelling of fresh snow and wood smoke. I can’t tell if he’s pleased or disappointed. Maybe he’s not even sure.

  I lurch to my side to throw up. He nudges a bucket closer with his boot, but there’s no need. It’s just a small bit of drool and bile. My insides are rejecting even the smallest thing now. “What’s happening to me?”

  “It’s the infection,” he says, sitting on the bench to inspect my wound. His fingers feel like they’re made of ice.

  I glance over at the angry red flesh. “I don’t want to die here,” I say with a sharp inhalation of breath.

  “Then don’t,” he says, squeezing my arm tight, drawing the pus from the sutures.

  My head lolls forward. I feel like I might pass out at any moment.

  “How did this happen?” he asks, his voice harsh in my ears, insistent.

  For a moment, I can’t remember, maybe I don’t want to remember, but slowly it comes back to me, nothing more than a flash of images—Gertie’s scalp glinting in the moonlight. The woods. The seeds. The storm. Tamara’s twitching body being shoved out of the gate.

  “Kiersten,” I whisper, my shoulder aching at the memory. “It was an axe.”

  Dabbing at the edges of my cut with witch hazel, he asks, “What did you do to her?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” I say, my chin beginning to quiver. I try to pull up the pelts to hide my emotion, but I don’t have the strength. “I only wanted to make things better…,” I whisper. “I wanted it to be … different.”

  “Why?” he asks, rewrapping my shoulder in a fresh bandage. I don’t think he’s that interested, he’s probably just trying to keep me talking, keep me conscious, but I want to talk. I want to tell someone my story, just in case …


  “The dreams,” I reply. “The women of the county aren’t allowed to dream, but I’ve dreamt of a girl ever since I can remember.”

  He looks at me curiously. “Is that the girl you were asking me about?”

  I don’t remember telling him about her; it makes me wonder what else I’ve told him in my addled state, but what does it matter anymore.

  “I know it sounds crazy, but she was real to me. She showed me things … she made me believe that things could be different … not just for the grace year girls but for the laborers … the women of the outskirts, too.”

  He stops and stares at me. “Is that your magic?” he asks.

  “No.” I shake my head.

  “Then what do you think it means?”

  “I don’t think it means anything anymore. It’s just a fantasy. What I wanted my life to be.” Reaching for the comfort of my braid, I pull it over my shoulder, tracing the red ribbon with my fingertips. “In the county, only our husbands are allowed to see us with our hair down, but when we arrived at the encampment, the girls took out their braids as a symbol that they’ve embraced their magic. I refused. That’s the real reason they turned on me.”

  “Why would you refuse to embrace your magic?” he asks, unable to conceal his shock.

  My eyes well up to the point that I can’t see clearly, but I refuse to blink. “Because it isn’t real.” Saying it out loud feels dangerous but necessary.

  Pressing his wrist against my forehead, he says, “We really need to get your fever down.”

  I jerk my head away from him. “I’m serious. I don’t know if it’s something in the air, the water, our food, but something is making them change … making them see and feel things that aren’t real. It happened to me, too, but when they banished me from the camp, I got better. Clearer.”

  “You were starving to death when I found you, bleeding out—”

  “Have you ever seen them fly?” I raise my voice. “Have you ever seen them disappear before your very eyes? Have you ever seen them do anything … but die?” The tears finally release, searing down my face.