Sisters of Sorrow

by Axel Blackwell

  “Momma said Donny can’t never leave me!” Maybelle cried, her words tumbling out of her like lost marbles. “She said just ‘cause she’s in prison don’t mean we don’t have to mind her, and she told Donny he always has to stay with me, and I told him that, but he tried to leave me in the woods, but we gotta do what momma said, so I came with him so he won’t get in trouble, I followed him, only he don’t know it.”

  Anna’s mind reeled, trying to make sense of Maybelle’s story, trying to maintain her own fragile grasp on reality. She could feel the gaps in her thoughts, as if her mind had simply chosen to discard bits of information, pieces of memory it found distasteful.

  But she needed those bits and pieces. A voice in her head told her so.

  She managed, “And you shot the nun?”

  “She hurt Donny!” Maybelle wailed, “and now he won’t wake up!” Then she screamed, with startling ferocity at Eustace’s corpse, “You don’t hurt my brother!”

  Anna looked at Donny again. It hit her like a punch in the gut. It was impossible to even hope he was still alive. The wood his face rested against pushed it askew. His jaw hung open like the mouth of a dead fish. None of Donny’s life shown in his half-opened eye.

  Seeing him that way destabilized her. For as long as she could remember, she had been walking a tightrope between what was real and what she needed to believe to survive. The bubble of blood forming at Donny’s nostril, inflating, bursting – that stupid, vacant stare of one-half eye – they rocked her tightrope, and now she would fall.

  Her mind begged her to fall on the side of fantasy, to just forget again, about Donny, about her little brother, to forget about ever wanting to see the ocean, forget about the chaos around her. If she was just standing alone in a room of smoke and water, that would be good. Her body just cold, dark water. Her mind just thin, white smoke.

  And why not, what does it matter now?

  Reality, the other side of her tightrope, had only one argument in its favor. The iron key Anna still held in her hand. It anchored her to the here and now, and try as she might, it refused to let her slip away.

  She had been given this key twice. Both times, upon receiving it, the key had unlocked her secret reserves of hope. Both times, she had been elated, overwhelmed by joy or relief. And the key had brought her to this place.

  Joseph had given her the key. He was here somewhere. And Dolores, that silly, lunatic nun – no, fake nun – or witch or whatever she was, she had also given Anna this key. Whatever happened to her?

  You know damn well what happened to her.

  Anna grasped the key so hard that her nails dug into her palm. Reality crashed over her like a six-foot wall of surf. Dolores’s words, from so many lifetimes ago, spoke calmly inside her head, guiding her return to the present, That was a brave and noble thing you did.

  Maybelle stared up at Anna, her head on Donny’s chest, her eyes huge and streaming. Anna wanted to tell her that Donny would be okay, but that was fantasy, so she said nothing. Instead, Anna looked up the pile to where the witch burned.

  The buckets of water she threw had slowed the fire, had most certainly prolonged Dolores’s life, but the fire had reached her at last. Flames clung to her shoes, crawled up one stocking, licked at the fringes of her dress. Dolores was oblivious. She sat rigid and strained, chanting endlessly.

  She is in the storm.

  Donny had told her he cut all the ropes. She hoped that was true, Donny’s knife had disappeared under the swill after Eustace hit him. Anna inhaled deeply. Smoke burned her throat. She held the breath and climbed to the top of the pyre. She hooked her arms under Dolores’s from behind, clasping her hands together across Dolores’s chest, and dragged her backward down the pile.

  Dolores’s feet continued to burn. She chanted on in hoarse whispers. Anna’s torn dress slipped off her shoulder. Flames licked at its tattered hem and caught. Her bullet wounds screamed with the exertion. Anna knew these things, accepted them as reality. She also accepted the reality that she could do nothing about any of it just now.

  When they reached the water at the bottom of the pyre, the flames on Dolores’s feet hissed out. Dragging her down the steep pile had been difficult. Anna doubted she would be able to drag her up the flight of stairs.

  No, the other Anna’s voice was grim, if we are going to be accepting reality now, it is impossible for you to move Dolores to the balcony, let alone drag her all the way through the kitchen, down another flight of stairs, and across the grounds to the woods. That isn’t going to happen, no matter how bad you want it.

  “Dolores! Snap out of it!” Anna yelled, to no effect. Anna shook the woman violently. Dolores slumped into the rising water. Anna lifted her shoulders and propped her against the heap. “Please, Dolores, I can’t carry you. Please wake up!”

  Anna looked to the nook where the mercenary had held her. Flames and lightning illuminated the room, but the smoke grew denser with each passing minute. Anna could not see whether he still lurked there. She scanned the room and saw that the other staircase had a similar nook beneath it.

  She placed her hand on Maybelle’s shoulder. “Maybelle, honey, we need to hide, okay? I’ll bring Donny with us, then I’ll come back for Dolores. We’re going to hide under those stairs. Do you think you can get yourself over there?”

  “Only if you bring Donny,” she whimpered.

  “I will, I promise.” Anna stepped toward Donny.

  Dolores’s hand shot out, quick as a striking adder, and grabbed Anna’s wrist. Anna yelped and jerked away but Dolores held fast. Her grip became painfully tight.

  “I’ll come back for you…” Anna started.

  Dolores pulled Anna to her knees beside her. The witch’s chanting quickened, intensified. Her lips flew, her head bobbed.

  “Dolores, you’re hurting me. We must leave, please…”

  “Anna!” Abbess McCain’s voice, sweet as poisoned honey, drifted through the haze. “There you are. We’ve been looking all over for you.”

  Chapter 25

  Anna peered through the smog, searching for her tormentor.

  “I see you’ve ruined our witch roast, you little bitch,” Abbess McCain said. “I think your murderous mother drowned the wrong child. In fact, she said so herself, your father told me…”

  Shadows moved, just beyond the bell tower’s column of water. Anna couldn’t tell how many people were there. More than just McCain. The shadows moved calmly, without rush or alarm. Anna understood that the battle was over.

  “Are you aware, Anna, that your father knew who drowned little Ephraim?” McCain continued. “He knew all along that you were innocent. He let you take the blame because he loved your mother,” she paused, “but he never really loved you. He told me so.”

  Anna felt Maybelle cowering behind her, wedged between Anna and the pyre. Hattie’s flintlock was in Anna’s hand, she didn’t know how it got there. Anna pulled the hammer back, as Donny had shown her. This one has a hair trigger. She aimed toward the approaching shadows and touched the trigger. Its hammer fell with a dead clack. Donny had also said, you only get one shot.

  McCain’s shadow became her form as she stepped into the pillar of rain. Two other witch-hunters accompanied her, one on each side. Bright white light surrounded McCain, the lightning blazing through the open bell tower carried down to her along skeins of rain, drawing a shaft of splendid radiance.

  Abbess McCain basked in it.

  “Look what I have here, Anna.” She hoisted a large, hairy mass. “It’s Joseph’s head. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted Joseph’s head. Imagine my delight when he showed up with not just one head, but two!”

  McCain lifted a second hairy mass. Anna saw them clearly now in the sparkling pillar of rain. Neither head snapped. Joseph was completely dead. Anna’s lip curled in a bitter smile.

  “Oh, and speaking of heads,” McCain continued, “I made you a promise, Anna, do you remember? I told you I would hang your head on my wall. And I believe in
keeping promises.”

  Dolores’s chant changed. She spoke different words now, and she spoke louder. The smoke had seared her throat, Anna could hear it in her harsh rasp, but Dolores forced the words out, rocking forward and back in the water.

  “Perhaps you would be so kind as to ask your witch friend to cast her clever spell on you, so that your head remains alive after I cut it off. I would so love to hang a living Anna head in my new office,” McCain laughed, then added, “Of course, I would have to sew your mouth shut. Heaven knows what a pain it is to listen to you talk.”

  The room darkened. It took Anna a minute to realize why. The room quieted as well. For the first time in hours, the lightning ceased and the sky silenced. Without the thunder’s agitation, the bell’s incessant single note dwindled.

  Other sounds emerged that had been hidden in the thunder’s roar – the splashing of rain, the crackle of the fire, the moans of broken witch-hunters. Anna held her breath. Maybelle grabbed Anna’s hand. Even McCain stopped her taunting.

  Then the sky broke. A concussion shook the room, as fierce and bone jarring as the boiler explosion. A rapier of silver sky fire exploded into the top of the tower. The light from the blast filled the tower, flared down the shaft of rain like God’s own search light. The bell wailed, not its single steady note, but a discordant and unmelodious warble, growing louder by the second.

  Then they saw it, the bell, plummeting from above the domed ceiling, rocketing downward in the shaft of light, a four-ton cannon ball. It blasted straight through the floor as if the floor had been made of tissue paper rather than stone. A great geyser from the cistern below the floor exploded upward, a column of old rain sheathed inside the new. It hung in the air longer than Anna thought possible, then splashed back down into the gaping hole left by the bell’s passage.

  Only after the geyser settled did it occur to Anna that Abbess McCain had been standing in the center of that shaft of light.

  Her two remaining goons stood awe-struck. Water ran past their feet, draining into the hole. Anna’s weary mind thought it looked like the world’s largest flush toilet. She giggled, but stopped as soon as she heard herself. To her own ears, it sounded insane.

  Large stones fell from the ruined tower, each throwing up huge geysers of their own. The goons, now only shadows in the fog, turned and ran for the double doors. Yet another wave rolled along the outer wall, rushing toward the main entrance. A fleeting desire to warn McCain’s henchmen crossed Anna’s mind. This time when she giggled, she didn’t stop herself.

  The wave slammed into the doors, finally destroying the last of the bracing. Water rushed across the floor, sweeping away all in its path. The hole in the floor swallowed much of the wave, along with the two goons. They joined their mistress in the cavernous cisterns below The Saint Frances de Chantal Orphan Asylum.

  Anna’s knees gave out. She flopped on her butt beside Dolores. The woman had stopped chanting, she no longer held Anna’s arm. Her eyes were closed and her features relaxed. Lightning resumed in the sky. The storm continued, but its ferocity had diminished.

  Waves rolled through the arch where the front entrance had been. They looked like a giant tongue licking out of a stone mouth. After the third wave, the cistern had swallowed all of the sea it could hold.

  Pity there’s no one left to clean the pipe. It was the first thought Anna had had in several minutes.

  Stones from the crumbling tower continued to follow the bell into the abyss. Anna wondered how much of the structure would remain when the sun rose tomorrow. It suddenly struck her as fantastical that the sun would ever rise, or that she would be there to see it if it did.

  The water had risen nearly to Anna’s chest. It should have been freezing, but it seemed just fine to her. The cartilage in her knees and ankles, the shredded skin on her arms, her pellet peppered back – they had all finally stopped hurting. Her tattered nerves, having fulfilled their sacred duty to report injuries, had at last turned down the lights and called it a night.

  A melancholy calm settled over her, contentment. She had gotten almost everything she had wanted, and that was good, good enough. Standing up again seemed like the most ridiculous idea she had ever had, a monumental undertaking. Anna feared that even if she could stand, doing so would reignite her several injuries.

  “I would have liked to have run on the beach again,” she said, to no one in particular. “With the sun sparkling off the surf.”

  “And the wind in your hair,” Dolores said, her voice like sandpaper.

  Anna rolled her head toward Dolores. She said, “Hi,” because she could think of nothing else to say. She was afraid Dolores might try to make her move. “Can I just stay here for a while?”

  Dolores smiled a sweet, weary smile. “I’ll let you stay, if you let me stay.”

  Ocean water lapped against Anna’s chest. It rose with each new wave that rolled through the doors.

  “But,” Dolores said, “I think Maybelle should join the other girls.”

  “Is she really here?” Anna asked. She rolled her head the other direction.

  Maybelle lay across Donny’s body, her face buried in his chest, sobbing. They were mostly out of the water, part way up the soaking heap of tinder. The ocean had extinguished the fire. The pile smoldered on, but the flames were gone.

  “Maybelle,” Anna said.

  “I don’t want to leave Donny…” Maybelle whimpered. “Mamma said I have to stay with Donny…”

  “Maybelle, I’ll stay with Donny,” Anna said. She tried to use her gentle but firm head girl voice. “Mind me now, Maybelle. You have to do what the head girl tells you, just like I was your mother. Do you remember when they told you that?”

  Maybelle looked up at her, a long string of snot dangling from her nose and utter misery pouring from her eyes. Slowly, she nodded.

  “Now, I am telling you exactly what your mother would tell you if she were here,” Anna said. “You need to go back to Jane and Lizzy. You found your way here. You can find your way back.”

  “And you’re going to stay with Donny?”

  “Yes, Maybelle, I promise.”

  “Somebody has to hold his hand,” Maybelle said, choking, “‘cause he’s hurt and somebody…”

  “I’ll hold his hand, Maybelle.” Anna reached to where Donny lay. Her shoulder screamed and she winced, but once she found his hand and rested her arm against the wet straw, the pain subsided.

  “Can she come with me?” Maybelle asked, looking to Dolores.

  “I can’t walk right now, honey,” Dolores said, “my feet hurt too bad.”

  “Go on Maybelle,” Anna said. “You go as fast as you can, no dawdling now. Mind me.”

  “Yes, Miss,” Maybelle said. She slipped off the heap and waded in the direction of the stairway, like a white ghost drifting across the surface of the water.

  Anna looked over to Dolores. The witch’s eyes were closed, she breathed peacefully. “You did it, Dolores, you freed Joey.” Anna took her hand under the water and squeezed it. “That was a brave and noble thing.”

  Dolores squeezed back.

  At the top of the stairs, Maybelle stopped and looked down at them.

  “Go on, Maybelle,” Anna called up to her. “Tell Jane that Anna’s swimming in the ocean.” She looked back to Dolores and murmured, “I always wanted to swim in the ocean.”

  Dolores whispered, “It’s a fine thing to do.”

  Anna closed her eyes, holding Donny by one hand and Dolores by the other, the best two friends she had ever had. The ocean lifted her. And she swam. And it was, indeed, a fine thing.

  Chapter 26

  Anna rose from the dead the following morning, much to her dismay. Intense pain wracked her body. Every limb felt like wood, and her joints were full of gravel. Her throat burned and her lungs ached each time she inhaled. When she tried to open her lips, they stuck together. Her tongue clung to the roof of her mouth.

  She wondered if McCain had made good on her threat to s
ew her mouth closed. Maybe I’m still dead and she… But no, McCain was gone, buried beneath the bell and all the stones of the tower that once held it.

  Anna pealed her tongue from the roof of her mouth. It came away like the skin from a green banana. She poked at her sealed lips, prying them apart with her tongue. A little cry escaped as her lips parted.

  It occurred to her that she was no longer inside the rotunda. The ground beneath her was soft, almost spongy. The air smelled sweet, fir trees and wildflowers. Summerland? She squeezed her hands, but they were empty. Knuckles popped. Pain flared along one of the fingers, a souvenir from the mercenary’s revolver.

  If this were Summerland, Donny and Dolores would be with me…and it wouldn’t hurt so bad.

  Air moved across her face, ocean air. She heard whispering. Anna let her eyes slide open, just a slit. They stung. Crusty bits of matter glued her lashes together. As her lids parted, gentle light seeped in, a blue green blur. As they opened further, the blur resolved into azure patches of sky and verdant sprays of maple leaves and fir boughs.

  “Donny?” she said, her throat so dry she expected to exhale dust.

  “Shh…He’s right here.” It sounded like Jane, but Anna had never heard Jane speak so gently. Anna’s ears still were not right, one popped when she moved her jaw, the other rang softly. Maybe that explained hearing sweetness in Jane’s voice.

  “Where is ‘here’?” Anna croaked.

  “We’re in the woods behind Saint Franny’s, the place Donny showed us,” Jane said. “He said you hid here before you came back for us.”

  “You came…” Anna’s parched throat seized up.

  Someone placed wet fingers on her mouth. Cool water drizzled across her lips. It rolled over her tongue, soothing and hydrating her mouth.

  She tried again, “You came back for me?”

  “Maybelle told us you killed all the bad guys but you needed help.” This was Lizzy’s voice.

  “Actually,” Jane said, “Maybelle told us that Donny needed help. Lizzy, here, insisted we come looking for him.” A snide tinge colored Jane’s voice when she said “Lizzy.” It sounded more like the Jane Anna remembered.