Between the Spark and the Burn

by April Genevieve Tucholke

  “We’ll take three rooms,” I said. Which would leave us a little for gas and food and coffee and another night, if we needed it.

  “By the way,” Neely said, rubbing his right face-bruise with his hand. The cognac had made his cheeks go a bit pink. “You haven’t heard anything about the trees around here. About them . . . talking . . . have you? Or about some kids that have gone missing? Or a tall, redheaded kid causing trouble?”

  Miss Marple had started to ring us up on an old cash register. She paused, her small wrinkled fingers still on the buttons. “You must have been chatting with Wild Ann Boe. Our town gossip goes right off her rocker every year when the snow comes. After the first big winter storm, they found the Scotsman hanging naked, feet up, from a tree outside that isolated cabin of his. Such a big man as that, with that fiery orange hair. He hunted grizzlies, in his time. But someone had it in for him. You children are in the wilds, in case you don’t know. There’s not much difference between now and a hundred years ago, except the loss of the gold and the people that followed it.”

  She pushed a chunk of soft white hair behind her ear, and looked straight at me. “The snow set Wild Ann off, and the dead Scotsman just encouraged her. She started seeing all kinds of oddities again, just like last year, and all the years before. Omens in the sky. Portents in the rivers. And then the trees started talking to her, telling her to do things. Or so she said. If you ask me, Wild Ann is looking for attention more than sanity.”

  “So no children are missing?” Neely took a deep breath, and then put his hand to his ribs again. “There’s no red-haired girl? No talking trees? There must be more to this story than just one gossip. We heard about it all the way on the East Coast.”

  Miss Marple shook her head. “It will trace back to poor Wild Ann, I’m afraid.”

  I knew it.

  What now, Freddie?

  “Neely,” I said, not looking at him, keeping my eyes on Miss Marple. “Neely, we have to leave for Maine. Tonight.”

  Miss Marple clucked her tongue again. “Haven’t you heard? A storm is rolling in. Twelve inches of snow, plus wind. It’s going to hit in a few hours. You’re not going anywhere.”

  ≈≈≈

  The keys to our rooms were big and black, with the room number hanging from a metal tag on the end. They felt heavy in my hand, and solid, like they had a purpose and were proud of it.

  The hallway of the second floor was narrow and dark and the floorboards creaked. Canto and Finch took the first room, Neely the second, River and me the third.

  There was something so much . . . more, to sharing a hotel room with River instead of a tent. But he just followed me down the hall, and we didn’t have enough money for another room anyway.

  And if Neely looked at me over his shoulder in the hallway and if I looked at him over mine, well, what difference did it make.

  None.

  I set my suitcase on the bed and looked around. There was an old white sink in the corner. The bed was narrow for two people, but firm. The pink-striped wallpaper was turning brown with age, but otherwise the room was clean and airy enough.

  Freddie, you have to watch out for Luke and Jack. And my parents. And Sunshine. You have to keep them safe. Freddie, are you listening?

  “I do believe,” River said, leaning one arm on the heavy wooden dresser, “that this place used to be a brothel, back in Gold Hollow’s heyday.”

  I jerked myself out of my grim Brodie thoughts. River was talking. And it was clear and sane and made no reference to the sea. I needed to pay attention. “I suppose that’s why it was only forty bucks, then.”

  River crooked-smiled at me, and his eyes were mischief and spark and sly. “Come over here, Vi. I want to see what it feels like to have you next to me with a warm roof over our heads.”

  I went over and stood next to him by the dresser. He hooked one finger through the belt loops on my wool skirt and pulled me closer.

  “River,” I said, kind of quiet, lifting my face to his. “River, I’m afraid Brodie is in Maine right now and hurting my brother and Jack. Where . . . where do you think he is?”

  River shook his head, and his shaggy brown hair swept past my cheek. “No, Vi. He’s not in Maine.”

  “How can you be sure?’’

  River just shrugged, and pulled out his old crooked smile again and shined it down on me.

  God, it was good to have him back.

  And then I remembered.

  Neely, shirt off, body covered in bruises.

  I squirmed out of River’s arms and went over to the window. I opened it a crack, and breathed in. Miss Marple was right. A storm was coming. I could smell it on the air, cold and sharp and angry.

  We gathered on the main floor of the hotel for supper. Miss Marple was also the cook, as it turned out. The five of us sat at a solid table on an elegant, worn rug next to a roaring fire. We ate creamy corn chowder from steaming white bowls and buttered brown bread and homemade hot chocolate spiked with rum.

  And if it occurred to us as we ate that we drove halfway across the country based on the attention-starved ramblings of a town gossip, well, we just tucked into our meal and didn’t say anything about it.

  ≈≈≈

  The mountain storm began to blow just as River and I pulled back the covers and slid into bed. It rattled the windowpanes and howled at the doors and clawed at the cracks.

  I dreamed River was kissing the hollow of my throat in the middle of a blizzard.

  And when I woke up, he was.

  He was warm as summer rain. Smooth as the sea, and twice as deep.

  “Where did you get this necklace?” River asked. He moved the jade beads out of the way so he could reach the skin underneath.

  Neely.

  “Your brother,” I answered, quiet, barely even whispering.

  “Of course,” River said. “It was our mother’s. Our father gave it to her after our grandfather gave it to him. Did you know that?”

  I shook my head.

  “He must have gotten it out of the safety-deposit box in Switzerland, the bastard. You know, I was going to give this necklace to you for Christmas.”

  “River, what’s my name?” I whispered into River’s ear, just to check, just to be sure.

  “Violet,” he whispered back.

  “And where are we?”

  “In an ex-brothel called the Hollow Miner’s Hotel. Gold Hollow, Colorado.”

  “And who are you?”

  “The sea king, of course.”

  And then River’s eyes were on mine and they were so bright and full of familiar rascality that I felt like laughing, and did.

  “I’m back,” River whispered. His arms went around me and he squeezed me up and he smelled like coffee and midnight again and not the sea, not the sea, not the sea. “I missed you, Violet. I missed you so damn much.”

  “What do you remember?” I asked, my body tight to his and his hands on my hips and my face against his shoulder.

  “Bits and pieces. Enough.” He paused. “Violet, can you ever forgive me?”

  I didn’t think about it, not even for a second. “No,” I whispered. “I’ll never forgive you.”

  But then we were kissing again, and oh, I was so happy, I couldn’t help it, sunshine was streaming out my fingertips and each and every atom in me was shaken up and sparkling with joy and I wanted everything to be like last summer, I wanted it so badly, and I knew this time it wasn’t the glow making me feel this way, it couldn’t be, Neely was making sure of that, Neely, what about Neely, no, don’t think about it Violet, just enjoy this moment because it’s not going to—

  Footsteps in the hallway. The slap, slap of bare feet on bare wood. The creak of the floorboards and the doorknob turning because I’d forgotten to lock it because I wasn’t used to locking things.

  “Don’t worry
, it’s not Brodie,” River whispered.

  The door opened.

  He was right.

  Canto flew across the room and had a knife at River’s throat before I took my next breath. She leaned over the bed and her black curls fell on my bare upper back and it was warm and soft and terrifying. I tried to sit up, and the bed jolted.

  The knife went in deeper. I saw blood.

  “Canto, what are you doing?” And my voice sounded shrill to my ears and I hated it.

  Finch slid out of the shadows in the hall. “She remembered,” he said, his eyes on mine.

  “Is it true?” Canto asked, ignoring me, ignoring Finch, her eyes on River, only River. “Did you drown him?”

  Finch came forward and put his hand on Canto’s right arm. “Why don’t you hear him out before you gut him?”

  Canto paused . . . and then pulled back the knife from River’s throat. She moved to the end of the bed and just stared at us, her whole body shaking in little bursts.

  “I told her that River went mad from the glow on Carollie, and that he drowned me,” Finch whispered. “But I also told her that Brodie is the real villain. The one we hoped to find, out here in Gold Hollow. The one I was mistaken for in Inn’s End.”

  Canto kept her hand on the knife and kept staring. River sat up. He put his fingertips to his throat and they came back wet and red.

  Canto got up and stood with her back to the rattling window. “Let me tell you about Roman,” she said.

  And I squeezed my eyes shut at that, and pictured the boys at the Hag’s Shack that first night, and the ones who held me and Neely and Finch on the beach, all of them beautiful and dark-eyed and looking just like the boy on the poster, and I was already sick with sadness before Canto even opened her mouth.

  She had stopped shaking. Her arms were stiff at her sides now, her black hair in tight, tight curls. “Roman was a Finnfolk boy. He . . . we used to . . . He was special, even for a Finnfolk. And then one day he just disappeared. Everyone told me it was the Finnfolk way, that he’d gotten bored and run off to the mainland, like half his brothers before him. There was another girl, I knew about her all along, so I believed them . . .”

  Canto walked back to the bed. She put her left hand on River’s chest, and with her right she put the knife back to his throat. “You drowned him. Didn’t you, River.”

  River didn’t move. None of us did.

  “You turned my whole island into your worshiping sea slaves every night just for the fun of it and you drowned Roman and then Finch and all of you lied to me about it when I didn’t remember.”

  The knife went in, just a little, and blood began to drip again, drip down River’s neck and chest and pool in the swoop of Canto’s left hand where her thumb met her fingers.

  “Canto, put the knife away,” Finch said softly, red, red hair swinging as he shook his head. “Making River bleed won’t bring Roman Finnfolk back from the dead.”

  Canto kept staring at River. She stared at him like he was a monster.

  Or a god.

  I’d looked at him like that too, once upon a time.

  Then Canto reached her arm back and let out a howl. The knife went flying into the wall across the room, and stuck there. “You killed him,” she screamed.

  And I didn’t know which boy she was referring to, Roman or Finch. Both, I guess.

  “Finch told me about Neely’s bruises,” she whispered, eyes on River’s, still, still, all the steam gone out of her voice. “He figured it out. He figured out how Neely is the only reason you aren’t glowing us all up right now and making us be your sea slaves, like before.” She swiped her hands across her cheeks, quick, and then put them back down at her sides. “Do you . . . do you know what that did to me? Watching Finch drown and being too glowed up to do anything about it? And then made to forget for days afterward? You drowned a forest boy and the only person I’ve ever loved and yet no one here seems to care. Why doesn’t anyone care?”

  “I care.” River. He’d said nothing up until now. Not one word. And then again. “Canto, I care.”

  Silence.

  “I was trying to stop.” River put his hands in his dark hair and made it even messier than it was from sleeping and kissing and almost having his throat slit. Blood oozed from the small cuts in his neck and slipped farther down his naked torso. “And I would have succeeded. I was holed up in Canada and not using the glow and everything was going well. I was hanging out on the docks and doing odd jobs when I heard about a story from a passing fisherman. He said there was a sea king with flaming red hair on a North Carolina island . . .” He paused, and I stared at him and his eyes looked deep and lost and sad, sad, sad. “I’ve started to remember. Bits and pieces. I remember getting to Carollie and . . . and Brodie was there and then he wasn’t and then I was the sea king. I didn’t drown Roman, Canto. But I think Brodie did.”

  Canto and Finch went stock-still, and me too, all of us just stunned and quiet.

  Brodie? Brodie had been there first? Had drowned the Finnfolk boy, had sparked up River before going to Inn’s End? It was Brodie, all along?

  Canto screamed again. Tilted her head back and screamed. And then she was quiet again. The whole room was quiet again.

  “It’s the truth,” River said. Finally. He blinked fast and his eyelashes grew shiny and wet. “For once, it’s the truth.”

  Canto glared at River and seethed and seethed like she was the only person in the world who had a right to hate him.

  And then, after a few long, long minutes, she started to cry.

  Finch put his arms around Canto and led her out of the room, closing the door behind him.

  River crawled back into my arms, and he didn’t seem rascally or sly anymore. He just seemed . . . naked, and wide-open, and scared.

  “It’s going to be all right,” I said. My hands pressed into his skin, trying to stop his shaking. “It’s going to be all right,” I said, again and again, though I didn’t think it would. Not a bit. Not at all.

  Chapter 20

  I WOKE UP alone.

  Neely and I found River talking to Wild Ann Boe outside in front of the hotel.

  She had on a worn, green wool coat, and black boots. She had smooth brown hair and shifty gray eyes, though her smile was nice enough. She jerked when we opened the front door, and then darted across the porch right toward us.

  “Have you heard?” she asked. “Have you heard about the missing children?”

  I shook my head, but Neely nodded, and it seemed to encourage her.

  “I saw them. I saw them following a tall young girl into the woods. She had red hair and played a tin whistle and wore a striped suit, just like in the Pied Piper of Hamelin. She led them off into the darkness beyond the mountains.”

  The woman paused. Swallowed. Her hands were slim and red and shaking, and she seemed so upset, so genuinely upset, that I pitied her. I did.

  “This happened before,” she said. “The children up and disappearing all at once. Sixty years ago all the children followed a beautiful, brown-haired man into the mountains too, and never came back. And then the bear-killer Nathaniel Mellingsather was found cut to pieces next to his own shotgun. Now it’s all happening again. Why doesn’t anyone care? Why isn’t anything being done?”

  “Wild Ann Boe, don’t you have somewhere to be?” Miss Marple appeared in the doorway behind us, wearing an apron and a cunning look on her small, pointed face.

  Wild Ann stared at her. “The children,” she repeated.

  “Like those right there?” Miss Marple pointed to two eight- or nine-year-olds as they walked out of the café, their parents following behind.

  Wild Ann opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “Edith, you have the Devil sleeping in your hotel. Did you know?”

  Miss Marple sighed and shooed Gold Hollow’s gossip away with a flick. Wild Ann
turned and slunk off toward the general store.

  “She’s harmless. Mostly.” Miss Marple, whose real name was Edith, gave us a shrewd-ish smile. “How did you two sleep last night? I thought I heard some screaming at one point, but that could have been the wolves. They get a little close in winter when the food is scarce.”

  She stared at us.

  Neely didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. The ex-brothel walls were just about as thin as you’d expect them to be, I guess.

  “So was it just the wolves, then?” Miss Marple asked.

  I nodded, and then, a second later, Neely joined in. I swear I saw a twinkle, a damn twinkling twinkle, in Miss Marple’s eyes. I guess she was used to mysterious screams in the night.

  “It doesn’t look like it now, but another storm is on its way.” Miss Marple pointed one finger at the sky and one at Neely. “You’re not going anywhere. Not today.”

  I whipped my gaze toward the peaks. She was right. I saw the line of dark, hovering.

  Damn it.

  A storm was coming, and there was a barn boy in Maine, and no Brodie in Colorado, and Neely was looking more pale and tired every damn minute, and now we were stuck here again, stuck—

  “You better come inside and have some oatmeal,” Miss Marple said. Her twinkling eyes were staring at me and Neely, and starting to look worried.

  ≈≈≈

  Neely fainted at breakfast.

  River was outside again, already finished eating his warm oatmeal with dried figs, cinnamon, cream, and butter. Finch and Canto hadn’t come downstairs yet, and we had the place to ourselves. I told Neely what had happened the night before, with Canto, and River, and Brodie, and the Finnfolk boy.

  He nodded, got up, and fainted.

  I was down on the rug beside him, faster than the space between heartbeats. But Neely just sat up again, shrugged it off, and laughed. Laughed.

  “You have to stop,” I whispered. “You have to turn it off. It’s killing you, Neely. You’ll let River suck you dry until you fall apart and crumble into the wind.”