The Wild in her Eyes

by Karina Giörtz

“I don’t understand why you keep saying that. I was ready. I was waiting.”

  “Annis,” he said calmly.

  “Yes?”

  “Who do you see when you look at Goldilocks?”

  She shrugged. Not in carelessness, but because the answer was obvious. “Someone brilliant and charismatic, like you said. He’s lovely just to look at, but then you get to know him, and there’s so much grace in the way he holds himself. There’s honor in him, a deep-seated knowing of right and wrong. He’s chivalrous and humble. And he values honesty and loyalty above all else. He’s like a knight without the armor.”

  “Precisely,” Poppy agreed with her. “What do you think he sees in himself?”

  Annis’s mouth opened without hesitation, and then shut. The words she was about to speak registered inside her mind and she sighed, silently accepting the defeat she now understood was coming. “He sees a lost boy, with no home, no family, who never wants to be a bother or a burden. He sees someone who has to work twice as hard as everyone else, do twice the dirty work and half the complaining, just to be accepted, to be allowed to stay.” She shook her head, her eyes glued to her hands in her lap. She twisted her fingers until they ached. It was the first time she’d acknowledged the painful delusions he lived within. “He doesn’t even know how handsome he is, always hiding half his face under that shaggy hair.”

  “And he won’t. Not until he’s ready.”

  Annis slowly raised her gaze to meet his. She understood everything now. “Having an act, taking our place in the show...It was never about how the world sees us, was it?”

  “No,” he admitted. “It’s about healing how you see yourselves.”

  “But...” she whispered, tears stealing her voice as they rose in her throat. “I was that pitiful girl. The pathetic little lamb. I know I was. It was only once I was here that I learned to be more, that I grew into more.”

  Hugh held her gaze, his confidence in her blazing from his eyes like a fire she could feel warming her skin. “Do you really believe a lamb could have survived what you did? Do you believe your beloved Annis would have sent a lamb out into the night to fend for herself? A lamb wouldn’t be here today. A lamb wasn’t here that day you showed up. We didn’t change you. We didn’t ask you to be anything other than what you already were. You were always the wolf, Annis. And everyone could see it. Except you.”

  Emotions crashed in on Annis from every direction as she watched Poppy exit the car. Thoughts and feelings collided inside her until all she could do was scream to let them out. Anger. Pain. Grief. Love. Courage. Truth. All exploded from her lungs and poured from her eyes as she sobbed into the pillow pressed to her chest. Eventually, the screams subsided. The tears dried up, and what remained carried on silently, unwinding inside her own head.

  It would take weeks, maybe months, maybe every last second of her life, to sort through them all. She found she was alright with that. She began to feel comfortable with the tangled up bits of memories and feelings that still whirred within her. She’d piece them together someday. Until then, they had a home inside her, right along with a heart that felt grander than before, capable of holding more love and light than she might have imagined. She blamed Sawyer for that. And she made a silent promise to thank him for it every day.

  MONTHS PASSED. SOMEWHERE along the way, the Brooks and Bennet family found their new normal. They moved forward by taking the memories and releasing the grief a little bit with every mile they traveled and every town they left behind.

  The hardest part, logistically, was finding a suitable caregiver for the lions. For a long while, they all took it in turns to fill the void Sawyer had left, which each person falling back as someone new kept stepping forward. Annis had a hunch about who would take the job for keeps.

  As with everyone, Goldilocks had changed in the months since Sawyer’s passing. It seemed to Annis as though confronting the tragic truth of life’s brevity and fragility had made him more determined to be alive, to be present, to be seen. Goldilocks would soon be ready to take the ring for himself, and, if Annis was right, he would be the new Brooks and Bennet lion tamer.

  “Any idea where we are?” Maude asked, stepping from the elephant cart with Edi, who swung her large trunk lazily back and forth as she walked at Maude’s heels.

  “No,” Annis answered, tossing the last of her breakfast to Fin, who caught it in midair. “But I’m sure Sequoyah does.”

  “What’s that I know?” he asked, coming up from behind her, surprising her with a kiss on the cheek.

  “Our current location,” she said, beaming back at him. It was still new to her, the way he showered her with affections beyond their previous handholding whenever he came around her, causing her to turn red and internally melt.

  “Savannah.”

  Annis stopped short. “Savannah, Georgia?”

  He nodded. “You had to have known we were headed this way?”

  “I did.” She tilted her head from shoulder to shoulder, unsure of how it all made her feel. “I just thought we were days out. Had hoped for weeks, to be perfectly honest.”

  “Your thinking’s been all wonky since you two started all this kissy stuff, have you noticed?” Maude teased her.

  “It has not.” It absolutely had. Who could carry on rational thought when a man as beautiful as hers was smiling at her? Touching her skin. Holding her hand. And placing those soft lips so tenderly against her own.

  “In any event,” Maude went on. “Do you have plans to do anything in Savannah, now that you know you’re here?” She arched her brow at Annis curiously, a slight skepticism showing through.

  “I’m not sure.” Annis placed her hand to her stomach. She suddenly regretted having had that second biscuit at breakfast. At least she’d given most of the third one to Fin. “I think I want to go to the house,” she said quietly, wondering if hearing the words out loud would make them sound less crazy than they did inside her mind.

  “I’ll go with you,” Sequoyah answered without hesitation, his hand sliding down her arm to meet her palm. “We can go this morning. I don’t have much left to do. And Poppy will understand.”

  Maybe it wasn’t crazy. Maybe it would be good, healing even, to go and say goodbye for good.

  “You don’t think anyone will be there, do you?” They hadn’t seen any wanted posters of her since William had been shot down by the police. It seemed that without him as the driving force, the case had died—much like everyone involved in it.

  “It’s been months. Who would suspect you’d show up now? After all this time?” he reasoned. He was good at helping her mind align with more rational thoughts.

  “So, we’ll go,” she said, confirming the plan to herself.

  “We’ll go,” he agreed.

  Less than an hour later, they were on horseback – Annis on Catori, the very mare she’d finally learned to ride on - taking the trails along the outskirts of town, headed for the Sanders’ house.

  The whole way there, Annis’s heart sputtered about in her chest, seeming to threaten to quit one second and explode the next.

  “Having second thoughts?” Sequoyah asked, as though reading her mind.

  “No.” It wasn’t until he’d posed the question that she’d realized that wasn’t it. She wanted to go. In fact, she felt more determined than ever to see the house. She wanted to take in all the material fortune William and her mother had felt so entitled to that they’d been willing to shred their own souls to attain it. Now neither of them ever would. Annis was certain she could draw some sick sense of satisfaction from seeing the abandoned mansion for herself.

  She felt her chest tighten and her jaw clench as she thought about all that William had cost her, but her heartbeat gave up its erratic patterns, taking on a fast and fierce beat that her breath could hardly keep pace with.

  “I want to see it,” she said calmly. “I want to see what my mother and William saw. What they deemed more valuable than the lives of others. I want to see it. T
o see it and know that they’ll never have it.”

  Sequoyah looked taken aback by her words. “You don’t mean that.”

  She nodded. “Yes, I do. It’s the only justice left for us.”

  His eyes narrowed. “There will never be justice for what they did, Annis. What they did, what he took, can’t be undone or returned. There will never be justice. What you’re looking for, you won’t find at the house.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  He laughed, but it was far from amusing. “Am I? About this? I’m surprised you of all people would say that to me.”

  Annis exhaled her frustrations loudly. “Why are you on about this? Don’t you think this is hard enough as it is? If I have this one small thing to cling to that will ease the pain, why can’t you let me have it?” she demanded, unable to grasp what his intentions were in picking a fight with her on this of all days.

  “Because it won’t ease the pain,” he returned. The concern in his eyes reminded her he was always looking out for her, even if she didn’t know she needed it. “You have to forgive them, Annis.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Don’t you see? If you don’t forgive them...If you can’t let this go, you don’t let them go either. They’ll be with you forever. You’ll never be free. You’ll never truly be...with me.”

  “Don’t say that.” It wasn’t true. She was already with him. Her heart had been his from the moment she’d laid eyes on him. It didn’t matter how broken she’d felt. She’d shared it, every last part of it, and he’d accepted it as it was. Until today.

  “It’s the truth, Annis. As long as you hold this inside you, it’ll keep us apart. You’ll never let me get any closer to you than you hold the grudge. It’ll be an impenetrable barrier between us.”

  “Don’t you see? That’s the problem. I can’t get past it from my side either. Every day, I live with the weight of what they did. Suffocated by it. Knowing you’re there, on the other side, it’s what gives me hope. It’s the strength I need to keep carrying it. To keep pushing onward, even with this.”

  “No. It’s not enough.” He shook his head. “It’s not the life I want for you. For us. A half-life, always tainted by the shadows of your past. You deserve more. We both do. I’ve given you every part of me, Annis. I want the same of you, if for no other reason than to set you free.”

  “I’ll never be free of this.”

  “Yes, you will. Maybe we can’t undo what they’ve done, but we can stop them from hurting you ever again. That’s what forgiveness is, Annis. That’s how to defeat them. That’s how we win. You forgive them, and they lose all power. You refuse, and they’ll torture you for the rest of your life. Long after they’ve taken their last breaths, they’ll still be sucking you dry of yours.”

  “Could you? Could you ever forgive the people who murdered your family?”

  “I have. I wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Yes, you do,” he reminded her. “Because I’ve never given you reason not to.” He turned away, looking out into the open green beyond the path they rode. “White men killed my family, Annis. And white men saved me. I wanted to hate them. I did hate them, for a long time, because it felt safer to do so. Safer to hate every white face I stood eye to eye with. And then, one day, I realized I was living isolated. Despite being taken care of and surrounded by love, I was still being robbed of my family. I couldn’t forgive the men who had taken the first one, so I couldn’t accept the men who had given me another. Once I understood...I changed my way of thinking. I let go. I forgave.”

  Annis rode in silence beside him. She reached out to take his hand and hold it in hers. She’d meant to give him comfort, but it was she who drew strength from him.

  “It’s not fair, you know,” she mumbled under her breath after a long while. “You being raised by Poppy.”

  He turned his head toward her, surprise gleaming in his eyes. “I’m sorry?”

  She shrugged, allowing a silly smirk to surface on her face. “How am I ever going to win any argument with you? It’ll be impossible. I’ve got a lifetime of feeling foolish and making sheepish apologies ahead of me. It’s not going to be an easy road. For either of us.”

  “Be easy for me,” he said, squeezing her hand. “I’m good at forgiving.”

  She took his words at the depth they were meant and nodded solemnly. “I’ll learn. I promise.” Even as she said it, her intention to forgive took hold and the tightness in her chest dissipated. The cage she’d been living in creaked and stretched, and then pieces of it crumbled away. She found it easier to breathe with the load weighing down on her shoulders slowly lightening.

  Sequoyah left her in silence to undo the mental web she’d weaved in her search for justice until, at last, they turned a bend and the mansion came into view.

  “This is your home?” Sequoyah asked, his eyes wide. “This is where you grew up?”

  She nodded, unable to speak. What William saw when he looked at this house was no longer of concern to her once she realized it was her home, her childhood, her past—and the last tie to those she’d loved, and lost, right along with those relics.

  Slowing the horses to a walk, they came up the drive. The gate had been left open and the grounds unkept for months. Everything about the house felt abandoned, like just another ghost of the life she’d once known. Then, the front door opened, just as they were sliding down from the backs of their horses.

  “Emmeline?” A man’s voice called out, hesitation and disbelief encasing her name. “Is it you?”

  Annis’s first instinct was to shake her head, but the man coming toward her wasn’t accusing in his question. His tone was hopeful.

  “Mr. Charleston?” Annis recognized that the man who walked toward them was her father’s attorney.

  “It is you!” his eyes went wide, a smile of shock spreading over his face. “I had lost hope. After all that you’ve been through, all that happened...” he trailed off. “You can’t imagine the guilt I’ve wrestled with after that letter was found. I’m just so relieved you’re alive. You’ve come home!”

  “Letter?” Annis couldn’t make sense of anything the man was saying. “What letter?”

  “Your housekeeper,” he said, clearly dumbfounded by her ignorance. “Annis. She wrote a letter the night William killed your mother, a witness statement, giving a full account of all she’d been privy to over her time here. She even foretold her own death, Emmeline. Well, she suspected it anyway. But she was smart, she was. Placed the letter in the mailbox that night before he killed her. It was lost under another file for months.” He shook his head, still visibly wracked with guilt over it all. “But you’re here now. You’re here, and the truth has surfaced. And all will be well in the nick of time.”

  “I’m sorry?” she still couldn’t wrap her mind around what was happening. The only thing she was certain of was that things had not been well and that nothing had been sorted in the nick of time. Time had come and gone, and many a tragic moment right along with it. He simply hadn’t been there to witness them.

  “The house. Your inheritance. You’ve been missing so long and, given all that happened surrounding your absence, they were preparing to declare you dead so that the city could handle the state of your family’s affairs moving forward.” He turned back and forth between her and the house. “But you’re here now. And you’re of age. It’s yours to claim. All of it.”

  Annis blinked, speechless. Finally, she understood the meaning of Floyd’s words. The letter. Floyd had been threatening William, telling him his time would come, that the proof of his guilt would be found. If only Annis had understood that night. The things it might have changed. And Sawyer...

  She shook her head, trying to clear the overwhelming clutter of her own thoughts, which had piled on top of each other. As they began to fall away, the more clearly she saw what was right in front of her. Her family home. She wasn’t sure she wanted it. No, she was sure
she didn’t want it. The house she had come to say goodbye to, that much had not changed in light of this new information.

  “What does he mean, what is he talking about?” Sequoyah asked quietly as time went on and Annis remained silent.

  “I think he’s saying I just became head of my family’s shipping company.” She gulped. It sounded absurd. “I own a fleet of ships. Seventeen, to be exact.”

  “Wh-what?” he stared back at her in disbelief. “What do you plan to do with them?”

  She shrugged, staring out across the woods behind her house and remembering the night she ran toward them, certain she’d never look back. She’d been right to run. She’d found so much more beyond those trees than she ever could have dreamed. Maybe it was time to take another leap of faith, to cross new borders she never imagined she’d see the other side of.

  “Think elephants get sea sick?” A small smile crept over Annis’s mouth as the vision came into view within her mind’s eye. A storm was brewing inside her, Annis could feel it stirring. And the world, it had better be ready.

  THE END!

  Acknowledgements

  In a lot of ways, I’m not much unlike Annis from this story. I began the journey of writing her tale a very different woman from the one who’s about to send the completed manuscript out into the world. And, just like Annis, I had a lovely circus of beautiful people guiding me along the way.

  First and foremost, I want to thank my parents, who not only have always supported and embraced my desires to let my freak flag fly wild and free and upside down but have been the wind to make it dance sky-high in moments I needed it most. This story would not be what it is today, if it wasn’t for them.

  While I’m on that, this story wouldn’t be at all, if it weren’t for my mother. From the source of inspiration to completion, no aspect of this book would have come to be if it hadn’t been for her. I hope she knows the depths of my gratitude, the words ‘thank you’ will never suffice.

  My brilliant editor, Jaclyn DeVore. Magic brought us together. And magic was made once it did. It’s as simple as that. And as profound. I’ve never had a more trusted partner in my writing endeavors, and I look forward to more exciting writing adventures together.