by Kim Liggett
“You mean, betray you,” I manage to get out.
He gets so close to my face that I can smell the bitter herbs clinging to his breath. “I would love nothing more than to peel the skin from your face like an overripe peach.” He takes in a deep breath through his nostrils, regaining his composure. “But I don’t want to hurt him. And I don’t think you want to, either. Play nice, play by my rules. Or I will come for you.”
I don’t know how long I sit there, running through every possible scenario, but by the time I find the will to move, the day has passed me by. The sky is smudged in pinks and purples—not unlike the colors my neck will be, come morning.
Hearing boots on the bottom tread of the ladder, I start rushing around, gathering my meager belongings, my cloak, my boots, my stockings. I don’t know what I’m going to say to him, but I don’t even know if it’s Ryker. What if it’s Anders coming back to finish the job … or the guards … Even if it’s Hans, how could I begin to explain this?
Grabbing a knife, I crouch next to the table. My hands are trembling.
A shrouded figure steps inside. I’m ready to slice his tendons wide open.
“Tierney?” Ryker calls out.
I let out a shuddering breath; he turns to find me crumpled on the floor.
“Hey … hey … it’s okay,” he says. “I’m here. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I told you that.”
As he pries the knife out of my hand and pulls me to my feet, I hold on to him, tighter than I’ve ever held on to anyone.
“Everything’s good now. I talked with Anders. He’s on our side. You have nothing to fear from him. He wants to help.”
I’m opening my mouth to try and tell him what happened when he says, “I have something for you. Anders actually helped me find it. He knows a place.”
He takes a piece of linen from his pocket, holding it as gently as if he’s carrying a butterfly. Peeling back the layers, he reveals a tattered deep blue pansy.
I feel a distant memory tugging at me. My veiling day. I was on my way to meet Michael when I stopped to look at the flowers … there was a woman working in the greenhouse who told me that one day someone would give me a flower—that it would be a little withered around the edges, but it would mean just the same. A wave of raw emotion rises inside of me. What she didn’t tell me was that it would mean so much more.
Looking up at him, I have to blink back the tears. I doubt Ryker knows what it means—he probably just thought it was pretty, but it’s hard not to see it as a sign.
“This is the flower of good-bye,” I whisper. “A bittersweet parting.”
“I thought it meant everlasting love,” he says.
“That’s a blue violet,” I explain.
“I guess Anders isn’t as good with flowers as he thinks he is.”
“It’s a tricky one,” I reply. But I think Anders knew exactly what he was doing when he picked this.
“Can we just pretend it’s a violet?” He smiles.
Desperate to hide my feelings, I nod, and quickly turn away, placing the bloom on the edge of the table.
As he takes off his shroud, I realize how good I’ve gotten at pretending.
Pretending not to notice the knives covering nearly every surface—knives that were specially designed to peel my flesh. Pretending that eating preserves out of the same kind of jar they use to store our body parts in to sell back to the county is perfectly normal. Pretending this isn’t crazy … that we could actually get away with it … live happily ever after.
But there’s one thing in all of this that’s not pretend.
I’m in love with him.
I may not be able to spend my life with him, grow old with him, but I can choose to give him my heart. My body. My soul. That’s the one thing they will never be able to control in me.
Untying the bow from my ribbon, I wait for him.
He swallows hard before stepping toward me.
Taking in slow, measured breaths, he twirls the strand around his finger.
Our eyes meet. The energy radiating between us is so intense it feels like we might burn down the world.
As he pulls the strand, releasing my braid, I know I should avert my gaze, turn my eyes to God, the way we’re taught, but in this moment, all I want is for him to see me. To be seen.
As he lifts my slip over my head, it’s like lifting my veil.
As I unbutton his trousers, I’m accepting his flower.
When he presses his skin against mine, the bloom he chose for me opens up, filling the space with a heady perfume of longing and pain. Entirely ephemeral. Absolutely forbidden. And completely out of our control.
Dropping the ribbon to the floor, the last confine the county holds over me, I lead him to the bed.
He’s a poacher. I’m prey. Nothing will ever change that. But in this small treetop cabin, away from our home, and the men who named us, we are still human beings, longing for connection, to feel something more than despair in this bleak year.
With nothing but the moon and the stars as our witness, he lies beside me. Pressing our palms together, entwining our fingers, we breathe in time. This is exactly where we need to be. There’s no second-guessing, no thinking. And when his lips meet mine, the world disappears.
Like magic.
Tonight, as I lie next to him, I memorize every inch of him with my fingertips. Every scar. Every chiseled ridge. I whisper secrets into his skin, everything I’ve longed to tell him, and when I run out of breath, I place the deep blue flower in the palm of his hand. He’ll know what it means. As bittersweet as it is, I can’t help thinking that maybe it survived for exactly this occasion. Because words would fail me, my lips would betray me. But this flower will tell him everything he wants to hear, everything he needs to tell himself. He can read into every petal, every fall, every rivet in the stem, but the meaning will remain the same. Good-bye.
He’ll probably be wondering if he did something, said something to make me leave, or maybe he’ll just think I was spooked by Anders. No matter the cause, no matter the pain, he’ll understand it was for the best—inevitable.
He saved my life. And now it’s time for me to save his.
Gathering my things, I descend the ladder. I see Anders was true to his word, placing the candle and the shroud beneath the blind, but the candle has burned down to the quick, leaving nothing but a pool of soft wax. As I look up at the sky, a feeling of dread presses down on me. I thought it was just before dawn, but the sun has been up for hours, hidden beneath thick dark clouds. I stayed too long.
Wrapping the shroud around my body, my face, I smell fetid meat and bitter herbs. It smells of Anders.
Bumping into something hanging from the ladder, I grab on to it to stop the noise. I know that sound. It’s the wind chime Anders made. I can’t help wondering if these are the discarded bones of grace year girls. If that’s what will happen to me.
Stepping away from the shore, back toward the barrier, feels wrong. Like something my body isn’t supposed to do. He said he’d mark the trail. I’m searching for a pattern, anything that stands out, when I spot the orange-yellow leaves of the butterfly weed marking the trail. The meaning couldn’t be more clear—leave and never return. Anders definitely knows his flowers.
As I follow the trail of petals, there’s a part of me that wonders if this is all an elaborate hoax, a path leading me straight into Anders’s blade, but when I clear the last of the trees and come face-to-face with the towering fence, I know he meant what he said—every word of it. But where’s the gap in the fence? I’m wondering if I’m too late, if Hans has already mended it, when I see a giant pile of leaves heaped against the side of the barrier. Getting down on my hands and knees, I start digging through it, relieved and heartbroken all at once to see that it’s still there. The gap is smaller than I remember.
But the world was smaller then.
I’m getting ready to crawl back through when I hear a strange brushing sound behind me. Like silk
against rough fingers. I told myself I wouldn’t look back, but my head turns on pure instinct. There’s nothing there. Nothing I can see, but with spring in full bloom, everything feels hidden from me. Even the top of Ryker’s blind has been swallowed up by the foliage. Nothing but a memory. Another dream I once had.
Crawling through the gap, I rip off the shrouds, but I can’t get away from Anders’s scent, his blade against my throat.
I brace myself against a pine, trying to catch my breath, trying to pull myself together, but just being back inside the encampment brings that claustrophobic feeling back.
As I stare at the path ahead, I’m thinking I could hide in the woods, wait out the rest of the year. I picked up enough survival skills watching Ryker these past few months, but that would be the coward’s way out. I’d never be able to live with myself knowing that I could’ve helped them. That I could’ve stopped this.
Despite everything they’ve done to me, they deserve to know the truth.
The woods look different than the last time I was here, every shade of green imaginable tucked in all around me, but the rocks, the trees, the jagged paths seem to be burned into my memory. With each step forward, I’m trying not to remember the madness, the cruelty, the chaos, but as soon as I reach the perimeter, the edge of the clearing, my heart starts beating hard against my rib cage, my palms are sweaty, my limbs feel weak. I have no idea what they’ll do to me, but it’s too late to turn back now.
Tying the red silk ribbon around my wrist, I step into the camp.
I’m expecting a flurry of commotion, the excited panic that comes when the trappers return from the wild—return from the dead—but no one seems to give me a second glance. In fact, the first few girls that pass seem to look right through me. I wonder if they think I’m a ghost, an apparition come back to haunt them. And for a moment, I wonder if it’s true. Maybe I died that night, maybe Ryker skinned me alive, and all of this is an elaborate hallucination of my own making.
Because even without the influence of the well water, I feel dizzy in their presence. Transparent. Paper thin. Like one stiff breeze could turn me into stardust.
“I know you.” A girl staggers toward me. I think it’s Hannah, but it’s hard to tell beneath all the dirt and grime. “Tierney the Terrible.”
I nod.
“Someone was looking for you.” She reaches up to scratch her head but ends up pulling out a clump of hair instead. “I can’t remember who,” she says before wandering off.
Cautiously, I walk the camp. The pots and kettles are piled up next to the fire, rotting food curdling at the bottom, rice scattered in the dirt, empty jars and cans strewn about. Roaches are battling it out for the remains. I pass Dovey’s cage, thinking she’s certainly dead by now, but huddled in the bottom corner there’s a scrawny bird. She’s not cooing, but when I slip my finger through the slats to try to pet her, she lashes out with a vicious squawk.
“That’s how she says good morning.” A soft voice passes behind me. I turn to find Vivi shuffling toward the gate, where a handful of other girls are huddled together.
The limbs of the punishment tree hang heavy, bloated with new trinkets, the soil beneath, caked in fresh blood. There’s a girl standing behind the tree—she’s so thin that I almost miss her. She’s stroking a long copper braid that obviously used to be attached to her skull. It makes me think of Gertie. Where is she?
As I open the door to the lodging house, the smell hits me like a runaway coach.
Urine, disease, rot, and filth. I wonder if it smelled like this when I lived here or if this is something new.
There are a few girls lying in their cots. They’re so still that for a moment I wonder if they’re dead, but I can detect the faint rise and fall of their chests. I stare down at them, but they don’t meet my eyes. They seem to be lost in a world of their own making.
I find the spot where my cot used to be. I remember how scared I was the last time I was here, but I also remember Gertrude, Helen, Nanette, and Martha—talking late into the night. We were so full of hope in the beginning. We really thought we could change things, but one by one, they fell under the influence of the water … of Kiersten.
Their cots are gone now. I tell myself that maybe they’ve just moved their beds to the other side of the room, but when I look over at the swollen pile of iron frames stacked up in the corner, I know it’s a lie.
I’d love to play dumb, pretend I’ve been in a soundless slumber, but I heard the caws in the woods, as I lay beside a poacher every night, doing nothing to help them. Nothing to warn them. “I’m so sorry, Gertie,” I whisper through my trembling lips.
“She’s not here,” a voice calls out from the far corner of the room, making my skin crawl. I don’t see anyone there, but as I walk toward the sound, a hand reaches out from under one of the beds, grasping my ankle.
I scream.
“Shhh…,” she whispers, peeking out from beneath the rusty springs. “Don’t or you’ll wake the ghosts.”
It’s Helen. Or what’s left of Helen. There’s a half-moon puckered scar where her right eye used to be.
“What happened to you?”
“You can see me?” she asks, a huge grin spreading across her face.
I nod, trying not to stare.
“I got so invisible that I couldn’t see myself anymore. They had to take out my eye, so I could come back … but Gertie…,” she says, staring off in the distance. “They took her to the larder.”
“The larder?” I ask. “Why?”
She tucks her chin into her chest. “Gertie was too dirty.” She snickers, but her laughter quickly dissolves into soft tears.
Backing away from her, I leave the lodging house and walk across the clearing to the larder. Each step feels harder than the last, like I’m trudging against a strong current. People halt and stare, Jessica, Ravenna, but no one stops me. No one is coming after me. Not yet.
The sticky heat has made the door swell. As I pry it open, a flood of flies comes pouring out, but all I find is a cot piled high with ratty blankets. And now I understand what Helen meant—the smell is unbearable. Covering my nose and mouth with my overskirt, I take a good look around. The shelves have been emptied; a bucket sits on the ground next to the cot, full of bile and filth. There’s a dark green cloak peeking out from beneath the scratchy wool blankets.
“Gertie,” I whisper.
Nothing.
I try one more time. “Gertrude?”
“Tierney?” a soft voice replies.
My breath hitches in my throat. Digging through the blankets, I find her. She’s bone thin, with skin the color of a late January sky.
“Where have you been?” she asks.
It’s all I can do to hold myself together. “I’m here now,” I say, reaching for her hand. I feel her pulse, but it’s so weak I’m afraid her heart will stop at any moment.
“Let’s get you situated,” I say, peeling off the blankets, squeezing her limbs, trying to get some blood flowing. “Did they stop feeding you?” I whisper.
“No.” She blinks up at me. “I just can’t keep anything down.”
“How long have you been like this?”
“Is it the new year?” she asks.
“It’s June.” I’m lifting her neck to prop it up on a rolled-up blanket when my fingers slip into something soft and gooey.
Taking the dusty lamp from the hook in the corner, I turn it up so I can take a look. The sight turns my stomach. I want to throw up, but I can’t let her know how bad it is. “Does this hurt?” I ask, pressing on the red swollen flesh edging the wound on the back of her skull.
“No. But I seem to have lost my braid,” she says, moving her hand down an imaginary line where it once lay.
And I realize that’s when time must’ve stopped moving for her—the day her braid was severed from her body. The day I was banished to the woods.
“Where is she?” Kiersten’s voice ratchets up my spine. I could try to hide, make her come in
and get me, but Gertie’s been through enough.
“I’ll be right back,” I whisper as I pull a blanket over her and slip through the larder door to find Kiersten heading straight toward me from the eastern barrier, a swarm of girls hovering around her.
She moves like a wounded predator, her steps are slow but calculated, a rusty hatchet at her side. It takes all of my nerve to hold my ground.
“I have something for you,” she says as she swings the hatchet in front of her.
Instinctively, I flinch, but she only drops the blade at my feet.
“We need firewood.”
I look up at her, really look at her—the dull-yellow matted hair, sunken cheeks, sallow skin, her once-clear blue eyes completely swallowed up by her pupils—and I realize it’s not just Gertie … Kiersten doesn’t remember. None of them do.
As I lean down to pick up the hatchet, she places her foot on it. “Hold it. You’re not allowed to take out your braid unless you’ve embraced your magic.”
Everyone in the camp seems to snap to attention, as if they can smell the venom in the air.
“I have,” I reply, a fresh surge of panic bubbling up in my chest. “You helped me. Remember?”
Her eyes narrow on me.
“You dared me to go into the woods. I was lost for a long time … near death—”
“You survived the woods … the ghosts?” Hannah asks.
“Yes.” I glance back at the trees, remembering the ghost stories they used to tell around the fire. “They spoke to me … saved me … led me home.”
I’m hoping my face isn’t doing what my insides are doing. I feel like a coward for lying, but it’s better than losing a tongue.