The Grace Year
Page 24
“I thought if you knew, you wouldn’t want to be friends with me anymore.”
“You thought wrong,” I say.
She studies me, a deep rift settling into her brow.
As she reaches up to try to scratch the back of her head again, I stop her.
“You need to heal.”
She stares at me intently, a haunted look coming over her. “Can we ever really heal from this?” she whispers.
I know what she means. I know what she’s asking.
Pulling the thyme blossom from my chemise, I offer it to her. Tears fill her eyes. Pawing at it, she tries to accept it, but it’s no use with the linen wrapped around her hands. We both start laughing. And in this tiny gesture, this minuscule moment, I know we’re okay … that Gertrude is going to be okay.
“What happened to us?” she asks, staring into my eyes. “One minute we were building things, changing things, and then…”
“It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault … not even Kiersten’s.”
“How can you say that?” she asks.
I’m not sure how much of this she’ll be able to take in, but I can trust Gertie. And it feels like if I don’t tell her, then it’s not real somehow. Leaning in close, I whisper, “It’s the well water. The algae … it’s hemlock silt. The same thing the crones use in the outskirts to speak with the dead.”
She stares up at me, and I can see her starting to put the pieces together. “The dizziness, the hallucinations, the violent impulses, it’s all from the well water? But if the magic isn’t real…,” she says, reaching out to touch my hair. “The ghosts in the woods … Tamara, Meg, you made all that up?”
“The ghost part, yes, but that’s the truth about what happened to them … how they died.”
“How do you know that?”
I think of Meg’s face—the look in her eyes when the dagger pierced the side of her neck. “Because I was there,” I whisper.
I see a chill race over Gertie’s flesh. “But if the ghosts aren’t real … how did you make those sounds happen?”
I want to put her at ease, tell her I planned the entire thing, but I’ve never been able to lie to Gertie. “I didn’t,” I whisper, trying not to imagine what else could be out there. Trying not to think of Anders’s threat.
“When you left … I thought…” Gertie’s eyes are getting heavy. She’s fighting it, just like Clara used to do at bedtime. “It’s like … you’re back from the dead.”
“Maybe I am,” I whisper, tucking the blankets in around her.
“Then tell me about heaven … what’s it like?” she asks as her eyelids finally come to a close.
As the last bit of the flame sputters out, I whisper, “Heaven is a boy in a treehouse, with cold hands and a warm heart.”
“He said he’d come back for you,” she says.
It takes me a minute to recognize her, to realize I’m dreaming, but then I notice the shaved head, the small red mark beneath her eye.
“Where have you been?” I ask.
“I’ve been waiting,” she replies, standing in front of the door.
“Waiting for what?”
“For you to remember … for you to open your eyes.” She pushes the door ajar.
I snap awake to find myself hunched over Gertie’s cot, the slightest whiff of bay leaves and lime in the air. It reminds me of the apothecary … of home. I used to love that smell, but now it seems too harsh … astringent.
But if it was just a dream, why is the door ajar? I’m certain I pulled it shut last night. I was so tired I suppose I could’ve opened it myself and not even remembered. Just because I’m back in the camp doesn’t mean I’m going to go crazy. Taking a deep breath, I try to concentrate on something pleasant, something real—dawn is slipping in, gray-pink on the verge of spilling into gold. I think this is my favorite time of day, maybe because it reminds me of Ryker. If I close my eyes I can hear him climb the ladder, remove his shrouds, and slip in next to me, the smell of night and musk clinging to his skin.
“See, I didn’t scratch,” Gertie says, startling me.
I look back to see her holding up her makeshift mittens. “Good.” I smile up at her, thankful for the interruption, but even more thankful to see the slightest bit of color return to her cheeks.
I catch her staring at my left shoulder, the deep indentation of missing flesh and muscle; I pull on my cloak.
“Sorry,” she whispers. “I can’t imagine the horror you must’ve faced out there.”
I want to tell her about Ryker … about how he saved my life, that the only reason I left him was to save his … but not all secrets are equal. In the county, if Gertie’s secret got out, she would be banished to the outskirts, but if my secret got out, it would mean the gallows.
“You need to teach me how to do a braid like that,” she says, trying to lighten the mood. “I mean … when my hair grows back,” she adds.
Lifting my hands to my hair, I find it’s been done up in an elaborate box braid.
Yanking the ends free, I shake it loose, as if it’s full of snakes. There’s no way I could’ve done something like that in my sleep. I don’t even know how to make a braid like that, but I know someone who does—Kiersten. She wore a similar braid on veiling day. I remember on our first night at the encampment, the girls talking about Olga Vetrone, the girl who disappeared in the woods. They said she was being haunted, that the ghosts would braid her hair at night, tie up her ribbon in strange configurations. Made her go crazy. Nice try, Kiersten.
After I get Gertie situated, I go outside to find Kiersten and the others gathered around the well. As soon as I start walking across the clearing to the privy, they stop talking. They turn to watch me. I can feel their eyes on me like a dozen weighted lures sinking into my flesh.
“Come here,” Kiersten says, the tone of her voice making my insides shrivel.
I look behind me, praying she isn’t talking to me, but there’s no one else.
Reluctantly, I walk toward her. I’m trying not to panic, but I can’t help wondering if she heard me whispering to Gertie last night, if she remembers that I was banished … that she stabbed me with an axe.
“Closer,” she says, holding up the bucket of water. The patch of bright green algae clinging to the rope brings that vile taste back—the feeling that your tongue is being coated in dank velvet.
Jenna loses her balance, accidentally bumping into Kiersten’s arm, causing some water to spill. Kiersten’s eyes flash.
Before I have a chance to even take in a breath, Kiersten slams the bucket into Jenna’s face. The sound of cracking teeth makes me cringe. Blood’s gushing from Jenna’s mouth, but she doesn’t scream … she doesn’t even flinch. The other girls just stand around as if they’re accustomed to these sudden bursts of violence. Or maybe I’ve forgotten what it’s like to live among them.
“This is for Tierney,” Kiersten says, offering me the bucket.
Jenna’s blood is dripping from the edge, making my stomach turn, but if I refuse, Kiersten will never trust me. This is a test.
Taking it from her, I’m pretending to take a sip when Kiersten tilts the bucket, forcing the liquid into my mouth. I’m choking on hemlock silt, blood, and malice, and they’re all laughing; their crazed pupils boring into me.
I barely make it into the woods before I hunch over, throwing up every last bit of liquid inside my stomach. I’m panting in my own filth, wondering if I’ve made a horrible mistake by coming back here. I should’ve used the shrouds to walk right out of this place and never come back—
“The shrouds,” I gasp. Anders. Is that what the girl was trying to tell me? He said he’d come back for me if I didn’t follow his exact orders—I was supposed to leave the shrouds on the other side of the fence.
Running to the breach in the eastern barrier, I come skidding to a stop when I see the shrouds are gone. I pace the area, trying to figure out what happened to them. Maybe I shoved them back through and forgot. I was upset.
I just remember wanting to get them off me as soon as possible. Or maybe an animal carried them off—they smelled bad enough. Anders could’ve slipped through and grabbed them. He made it clear he wasn’t afraid of crossing the barrier—the barrier—it’s been mended. Sinking down next to it, running my hand over the thin cut of cedar that’s been wedged inside, I feel a mood slip over me. I thought it would take at least a few days to fix, that they’d be replacing the entire log. Yes, it’s shoddy work, but I’m trying to figure out why I care so much. Maybe I just wanted to see a friendly face, to thank Hans for getting my supplies back to me when we first arrived, but it’s more than that.
The window to Ryker has been closed.
And it feels like the final word.
Turning my back on the fence, I make a promise never to come back. No good can come of it.
Instead, I focus on the task in front of me—bringing the girls back to the world … back to themselves. The easiest thing would be to lead them to the spring, but I don’t think that even when they’re high on hemlock silt I’d ever be able to convince them to follow me into the woods. The ghost stories are too ingrained, too real to them, and I certainly didn’t help matters with my stories from last night.
I’m going to have to bring the spring to them.
Since the camp is at a lower elevation, I’m thinking I can make some kind of irrigation system, but without pipes or proper tools, I’m going to have to get creative.
When I brace my hand against a birch to avoid stepping on a cluster of deer scat, the bark lifts up under my sweaty palm. I remember Ryker telling me he used rolled-up bark on his roof to get the melting snow to drain.
Using the hatchet, I make a clean cut in the bark, lifting off a huge strip. If I roll up enough of these and link them together, maybe I can form a pipe. It’s a tedious task, peeling every birch I can find, but there’s something cathartic about it. I was laid up for so long, I forgot how good it feels to use your hands, your mind, for something constructive.
I nestle them together to form one long tube, then start to dig. I remember trying to till the soil for the garden in the dead of winter, how hard that was, but it’s nearly summer now, and the soil gives way to me with only the slightest amount of pressure from the hatchet. After burying the tube all the way up the incline, I’m faced with the difficult task of diverting the brook. I have no idea if this will even work, but I’ve come this far. Digging out a trench, I watch the water flow into the tube. I’m running down the hill, elated to see it pouring from the bottom. Once I’ve filled the kettle, I realize I need to find a way to control the flow. I search the woods for a cork tree. I know I saw a couple of them around here. I figure if it’s good enough to hold the ale in the casks at home, it will be good enough for this. I spot one on the northern wooded slope and pry off a chunk. Whittling it down to the right size, I jam it in, but the water pressure causes it to shoot right out. I need something to hold it in place. Rolling a boulder over, I hold the cork over the tube and use my knees to nudge the rock beneath. I’m waiting for the bark to blow, the earth to reject the water like a spouting whale, but it seems to hold. For now. And all I can worry about is now. I’m thankful for it, because if I start thinking too far ahead, it will lead me all the way back to the county, to a very dark place.
Covered in mud and bark and leaves, I drag myself back up the incline, into the creek, letting the cool water wash over me.
An apple blossom drifts down to the surface, reminding me of the rose bath Ryker made for me. Flicking it out of the pool, I plunge myself under the water, trying to force the memory out of my head. As I come up for air, I hear the faint scratching sound again. Happy for a distraction, I jump out of the pool, following the sound all the way to the top of the ridge, to the girl’s remains—the tattered end of her ribbon rubbing against the bones of her neck. This can’t be the same sound I heard in the camp, or clear on the other side of the fence. The distance is far too great. But that’s not the only thing that has me on edge. There appears to be something wedged inside her rib cage. Something I didn’t see before.
Sinking next to her, I peer inside to find a flower. A red chrysanthemum. The flower of rebirth. My skin explodes in goosebumps. How did this get here? I reach in to grab it, being careful not to touch her bones. It’s a little tattered and bruised, but the stem is cut on the bias, with precision and care. I wonder if Kiersten did this to mess with me, but I’ve never seen a flower like this in the encampment before. I can’t help thinking of the bloom Ryker gave me—the one Anders helped him find—and I wonder if this came from outside the barrier.
“Stop it, Tierney,” I whisper to myself, pulverizing it between my fingers. “Don’t get paranoid. It’s just a flower.”
But a flower is never just a flower.
I blink long and hard as if I can somehow make things right in my head, but when I open them, nothing has changed.
Maybe it’s just traces of unpurged well water working their way through my system, or exhaustion, but there’s a part of me that can’t help wondering if by claiming the magic, telling them that I could communicate with the dead, I somehow raised her ghost.
SUMMER
The first few days with the girls are the worst—crying fits, bursts of anger, wanting to claw their own skin off. I remember feeling like that when I got banished to the woods, staggering around, trying to find my way back to some form of reality.
But in the passing months, we seem to settle into an uneasy routine.
On the first full moon, they all bleed at the same time—no punishments have been ordered, no new wild claims of magic have come forth, but I still feel out of sync. Out of time.
Though I haven’t had a drop of the well water, sometimes it feels as if I had. Little things: the scratching noise that seems to follow me wherever I go; the bones on the ridge that seem to shift a little every day, her head tilting more toward the sun, her toes pointing down toward the earth, the slight angle of her hip—as if at any moment, she could rise. Maybe it’s merely the power of suggestion making me feel this way. I’ve been telling ghost stories every night to satisfy the girls. Maybe I’m starting to believe my own lies, but nearly every morning, I wake to the smell of lime and bay leaves, my hair braided. I don’t mention it to anyone, because I don’t want to give Kiersten the satisfaction, but I can see it in her eyes, her growing frustration with me.
My biggest obstacle by far is keeping my thoughts from slipping under the fence, walking toward the shore, climbing the ladder to the best feeling I’ve ever known.
When I have the strength, I get up and move, find something to keep myself occupied—weaving rope, rebuilding the rain barrels, clearing the trail, leveling it off so it’s wide enough for the wagon to carry the water without spilling a drop—but at night when everyone is sleeping, and my body has failed me, I have no choice but to sit here, my mind playing through every detail of my last night with Ryker on a constant torturous loop. Sometimes, I close my eyes and try to meet him in my dreams, but I don’t dream anymore. Of anything. Even the girl feels like a distant memory, someone I used to know—just another thing that’s left me.
Although the girls have access to plenty of fresh water now, they still drink from the well on occasion. Maybe it’s self-preservation, knowing what their body needs.
I remember Father treating trappers from the north, feeding them thimblefuls of whisky on the hour. It wasn’t enough to satisfy them, but just enough to keep them from going into the throes of withdrawal. And that’s exactly what this is—a withdrawal. I can’t imagine going cold turkey from the hemlock silt, marching for two days straight while you purge everything from your body. No wonder the girls are so out of it when they return—they’re half dead, and the other half only wishes they were.
Doing it this way will take longer, but they won’t feel like their bones are being turned inside out. Hopefully it will feel natural, like their magic is slowly leaving them, which isn’t that far from the truth.
On a bright note, Dovey has resumed her usual cheery coo. Helen even offered to let me carry the bird around for a while, but it’s best not to get too attached. I remind Helen that we’ll have to leave her behind when the guards come for us, but she doesn’t want to hear it. The women aren’t allowed to own pets in the county. We are the pets.
Other than the disturbing night visits, Kiersten has steered clear of me, but the one thing I’ve learned about Kiersten is you can never let your guard down. I’ve been watching her, sometimes staying up all night to try to catch her sneaking off into the woods to move the bones, but she doesn’t seem to leave the camp. She’s been watching me, too. Sometimes, when we’re gathered around the fire, I catch her tracking me like prey. I try to ignore it, pretend it doesn’t spook me, but the fact of the matter is, the more I help them, the more they will remember.
And as the second full moon draws near, I find myself moving in shadows. I don’t feel at ease anywhere anymore. Not even in my own body. My skin.
It’s not just the sound of the ribbon, or the shifting of the bones on the ridge, it’s a presence I feel hanging over me everywhere I turn. Even the girls, who I thought would be further along by now, still spend most of their time listening to the wind, getting lost in the clouds, speaking of their magic like it’s a living, breathing thing. At first, I thought it was just to please Kiersten, a means of survival, but I’m afraid it goes much deeper than that. Maybe it’s something they don’t even want to give up.