The Breathless

by Tara Goedjen

  When she got to the edge of the kudzu, she stopped. The deer stood knee-deep in vines that had swelled across the ground and crept over the bushes, cloaking them in green too. Stems and tendrils had sprawled across the trunks of the stubbier trees, swallowing them completely, halted only by the larger trees and the little creek. Just beyond was a small cement dome—an old hut of some kind. The deer lay down in front of it and watched her with its head tilted.

  Mae felt bad for the creature. She’d never liked going hunting with her dad and Ro—aiming a gun felt wrong to her, like she knew it would tear through her own heart if she pulled the trigger—but Sonny had taught her the etiquette of hunting, how you never leave an injured animal to die alone.

  She lunged into the kudzu, moving toward the deer to find out what was wrong. The ground under her feet was uneven, and when she tried to step around a small green bulge she fell. Her bag hit the ground and the book tumbled out. As she reached for it, she saw what she’d tripped over and gasped.

  A gravestone.

  The kudzu-covered bulge was a gravestone. Her stomach went cold. Why was a grave marker out here, beyond the cemetery gates? She stared past it and her heart lurched. The sea of kudzu flowing toward the dome was full of small mounds.

  She was surrounded by headstones—she was in an old graveyard.

  She looked at the marker she’d fallen beside, and a tingle ran down her neck. Ignoring the vines underneath her hands and knees, Mae crawled forward, and then she pulled leaves off the closest grave and the smaller bulge next to it. The gravestone was old, its stone pockmarked. Etched across it was what looked like a horizontal figure eight. The symbol for infinity? Beneath it was a date, 1860, and underneath the date were letters, but they were weathered and hard to read.

  “ ‘I laid me down and slept; I awaked,’ ” Mae whispered, running her fingers across the stone, “ ‘for you raised…’ ” She stopped, she couldn’t make out the rest.

  “I awaked,” she said again. It was a loud word, a word that meant a change, that meant Open your eyes. It seemed a cruel thing to write on a gravestone. And why wasn’t there a name on it? She turned to the little slab next to it, pulled away the tangle of vines.

  This grave was smaller but had the same date: 1860. Then came an L and a U—

  Even in the warm sun, a chill shot down her spine and she glanced up. The deer was watching her, standing now with its white tail twitching, one of its hind legs raised. She needed to help it if she could. She quickly scooped up the green book from the ground. It had landed in the vines, and she brushed the dirt from its spine, pulled out the stems between its pages. As she flicked away a stray leaf, she froze.

  There was a row of cursive, each line identical to the next. I love Hanna, I love Hanna, I love Hanna, I love Hanna, I love Hanna, I love Hanna, the same three words written all the way down the page. It seemed strange and obsessive, childish, but it was the last line that caught her attention. At the end of the page was this: Hanna told me her secret name. And then, beside that line, the thing that made her go still.

  One symbol: a figure eight. Someone had run their pen over it again and again.

  Mae looked at the grave, at the exact same symbol etched across its stone. Her heart was going fast in her chest and it was hard to breathe.

  Just a coincidence, that was what Elle would say. Her dad would find a rational explanation, like maybe the page had been dog-eared, or the spine crooked, naturally falling open on that spot, but she didn’t want to be out here anymore, not among these graves—she felt like an intruder. She closed her eyes, and then she didn’t feel like an intruder at all; instead she felt like she’d been lured here, like someone had played a trick on her. That thought sent her scrambling to her feet. She shoved the green book into her bag; she’d check on the deer and leave this place. But when she turned toward the domed structure, the animal was gone.

  A patch of darkness fell across the kudzu. Overhead a cloud blanketed the sun and the air went suddenly cold, as if it might rain any moment.

  Then she saw the leaves trembling near the dome. Someone was standing in its shade. When he stepped out of the cover of vines, her hands tightened around her bag.

  There he was, not ten paces away, his shirt muddy, his jeans torn. His darker skin made his eyes stand out all the more—those blue eyes that were watching her.

  “Take me to her,” Cage said, his voice carrying over the silence. “Now.”

  BLUE GATE, 1859

  THE WITCH DOESN’T KNOW THAT Grady’s watching. The trees shield him from her gaze, but he’s close enough to hear her breathing and see the strands of her long white hair. Pearl kneels down in the mud and claws at it, bringing up what look like tiny animal bones. She stoops over again near the cabin and draws sharp lines across the ground with the edge of a bone. She stands, whispering something, and then whirls, her dark eyes finding Grady’s. His stomach tenses and he resists the impulse to back away.

  “Where your eyes go, your hand will follow,” Pearl says to him. She’s looking at him like he’s bait. Like he’s nothing more than a palmful of animal bones. Her son steps out from behind the shed, the ax in his hand.

  “Do you like what we do?” Pearl asks. The pit of Grady’s stomach goes heavy. No matter how kind Hanna is, her mother is something else. She’s not the devil worshipper his father claims, but she’s still someone to fear. Someone who can harness untouchable things like breath, like the beating of a heart.

  “Give me your hand,” Pearl says. She’s holding a knife now. Mud is on her dress, mud is caked on her fingers. Her white hair swirls around her even though the air is still. Grady feels a shiver deep inside. This is why his father made him swear never to come here.

  “Give me your hand,” she says again, and her blade gleams in the light. Then there’s another voice, a softer one.

  “Mother,” Hanna calls. She’s stepping through the cabin’s doorway. Her hair is tied back with the red scarf, and she’s wearing the same slip and long apron she always does, and the laces on her boots are missing. Grady has never seen anyone who makes him stare like her. “I did the work, so it’s me he owes,” Hanna tells her. “Put that away.”

  “We were only talking,” Pearl says, but the knife disappears into her pocket.

  Hanna turns to him. “Ready?” she asks, and Grady nods, his head clearing with a rush. What just happened?

  “Come on.” Hanna points and he gratefully follows her inside the cabin. The smell of raw meat hits him as he ducks into the gloom and then pulls the book from his back pocket. It’s his journal with the leather cover. The reason he’s here.

  “Where should we start today?” she asks.

  “You choose.” He gives her the dip pen he brought and sits down beside her at the table. Teaching her is payment for saving his brother, but it’s an easy trade. He likes sitting next to her in the candlelight. He likes how her dark hair brushes across his arm sometimes, how the cabin smells of meat and smoke. And spices too, just like Hanna. Garlic in hanging baskets, gingerroot ground in the mortar and pestle on the small table.

  After a while Hanna’s pen stops and he reads what she’s stuck on. “ ‘T-h-i-n-g.’ ” He stresses the last letter. Anything, he thinks; this is what he would do for her.

  “I know,” Hanna says, but she rewrites the word anyway. She holds the pen too tight; she never wants to let it go.

  “Now read it back to me,” Grady tells her.

  “To use for any-thing.” Hanna skims her finger along the top of the page as she reads her careful letters. She has learned fast, and he’s been learning too. Everything she writes he memorizes, just like he’s memorized the shape of her face so he can see it when he closes his eyes.

  “As a gen-e-ral pre-ven-tion and pro-tec-tion,” she says, reading out the next line. She pauses and looks at him. “I’m going to add the ingredients to it. We need to hurry. The sun’s almost down.”

  He nods and then his eyes go to her lips and his h
eart goes tap tap tap like the pen against the page.

  “Quit it.” She has stopped writing now, and he can’t help it—he leans in and kisses her cheek, so fast he’s not sure he did it at all.

  She pulls back and tilts her head at him. He wants to kiss her again but he doesn’t know what she’s thinking, so he waits. Her eyes have two glints of light in them from the candle. Makes it look like her pupils are glowing. Makes her look magic, and there’s no denying what she can do. Grady saw his brother dead, and then he saw him alive. That next morning, after leaving him with Hanna, Grady came back to the cabin and there was Jacob, his messy blond hair sticking up in a hundred different directions and a grin on his face. He had a bandage around his eye where the horse had kicked him and that was all. Whatever Hanna and Pearl did to him had worked to get his heart pumping again. It was more than just healing, it had to be. But Hanna says she won’t write that remedy down in the book. She’s worried most people can’t be trusted with it.

  “Grady,” she finally says. The pen goes clunk on the table. She leans forward and kisses him and his stomach drops and then the world drops away until her lips finally leave his.

  “Night’s coming. Almost time for you to go, Grady Cole,” Hanna whispers. “Your folks will wonder where you are.”

  His father’s with a patient, and he knows exactly where his mother is: in bed with another headache. Grady pulls off his hat and rubs at his hair, not wanting to leave. His heart is quick in his chest and he can’t stop himself from touching Hanna’s cheek. Her skin is soft and warm—just how he feels inside when he looks at her. “Another lesson tomorrow?”

  “I want to,” she says. “But—”

  “But what?”

  Her jaw bears down like it does when she’s thinking. “Maybe we shouldn’t…,” she starts, and he holds his breath. “Grady, you don’t know me. You don’t know my family—”

  “I do,” he cuts in. It’s true he doesn’t know much about her family: one day they just appeared, built their cabin at the edge of Blue Gate’s property, and soon word spread about their remedies, their magic. Pearl and her son remain a mystery; they even speak to each other in a language he doesn’t recognize. But he knows Hanna—he knows how he feels about her, at least. Every lesson has made him fall more in love, and he wishes telling his father he wants to marry her wasn’t so hard. Now Hanna looks away, at anything but him. Her gaze is on the fireplace, the strings of sage hanging to dry. “Hanna?”

  “That’s not even my real name,” she says. He’s shocked, but if she’s got secrets, she can share them when she wants. Her shoulders are tense now, her dark eyes searching his own.

  “Tell me what I should call you, then.” He gently tilts her chin toward him. The red scarf in her hair is framing her face and she has that smell he loves on her, sweat and spices and ink.

  “I can’t,” she says. She takes his hand and turns it up. “I’ll show you instead.” With her fingertip, she traces a symbol onto his palm. “It’s my other name,” she says. “One is ordinary and one is magic.”

  He’s confused but won’t let it bother him. “Could be easier just to call you Hanna,” he teases. She laughs like he wanted her to, and it’s the best thing he’s heard all day. Maybe he could stay longer and they could do another lesson? Take out the ink, open the book again. He wants a reason to sit next to her, to be with her, but her eyes are going to the doorway.

  “Night’s coming,” she says. “Go now, Grady.” She thrusts the book and two small jars into his hands. “Take this, it’ll help your mother’s headaches. And this one’s for Jacob.”

  Hanna saved Jacob just like Pearl saved his mother all those years ago. She was dying in childbirth and his father said there was nothing he could do, so Grady ran into the woods, found his way to the witch’s house. His family is alive thanks to Pearl, and now thanks to Hanna too.

  He feels bold enough to kiss her cheek again, which earns him another laugh before he rushes out the door. It’s dusk, but he can see enough to find the trail through the trees. He glances back at the warm light the cabin makes and keeps going. He’s almost to Blue Gate when he hears a whistle.

  “Grady!”

  His little brother’s sitting on the corral’s fence, waving at him. The bandage is still wrapped over his eye, and there’s a blossom of a bruise on his neck.

  “Finally!” Jacob calls out. He hops down from the fence and jogs over. His hair’s sloppy like usual, and he’s got a young bird in his shirt pocket, probably another one he’s saved. “You went to the witch’s house again, didn’t you?” he asks, and Grady wants to lie but can’t.

  “Don’t say anything,” he tells Jacob. “It’s our secret, all right?”

  Jacob grins, and Grady smiles back at him. What happened with the horse is their secret too, and so far Jacob’s kept it. He knows what their father would do if the truth was out. Grady ruffles his brother’s sweaty hair and then smells pipe smoke.

  No, no, no. He slowly turns, already knowing what he’ll see. Standing just beyond the corral is their father. He’s close enough to have heard everything.

  “What’s wrong?” Jacob asks, and Grady is afraid to answer. He wishes, in this very moment, that he could go back in time, could hurry a little faster. He wishes he could have predicted that his father would come home early. But most of all, he wishes his father was a different man. A man who greeted him instead of holding out a lantern and glaring with those pale blue eyes. Whatever he’s thinking makes his face look cold and dark.

  Grady’s heart is beating fast, but it’s not the heart of a creature caught, its death certain—no, this is a louder thing, a booming thing: this is the sound of a creature alive, and we hear it all the way from where we watch in the shadows. We hear it now, this insistence in his chest, this battering against his ribs, and we hear it a hundred years later, because there will always be this moment with Grady, right now and here, before the darkness swallows him whole.

  IT WAS A TRAP. HAD to be. Cage leaned against the cemetery’s iron fence, hiding where it was darkest. No way Mae would show tonight. If what she said was true, Ro was dead and they thought he’d done it. This is bigger than both of us, Cage. That small memory of Ro shouting at him, that’s what scared him the most. Just back off! Because if he’d lost his temper…

  But he would never hit her. Never.

  And her sister would never show tonight. She was probably calling the police right now. It’d be an ambush, with that big hulk of a man—Childers, that was his name. Asking Mae to come here had been a mistake, but he wanted to know for sure.

  A footfall sounded and Cage turned toward the dark path, his fists tight. He’d go down fighting.

  Another footstep and then Mae was ducking out from the trail. He scanned the woods behind her, but as far as he could tell, she’d come alone. A shred of luck.

  She stood in front of him in the moonlight. Pine needles at her feet, Ro’s thin red sweatshirt hanging over her torn jeans. Her hair was tangled-looking, long and thick, like there was more of it than her.

  He was about to speak, but she put a finger to her lips and then pointed at the gate, toward the caretaker’s hut, the reason they’d waited for dark. Cage nodded and went to the fence, heard her following with light steps. When he held his palms up to hoist her over, she looked at him with wary eyes. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a knife. Tried to flick open the blade, but it didn’t work, so she just pointed the hilt at him.

  “Don’t try anything.” The knife was trembling. It was the worst threat he’d ever seen.

  “I’m trying to help you over.”

  “I’m just saying, don’t try anything.”

  “You’re not gonna pull out a rifle next, are you?” He was mostly joking, but she didn’t see the humor, and then he thought of Ro and pain racked his chest. Mae’s gaze stayed on him as she slipped the knife into her pocket and stepped onto his palms.

  It was like she weighed nothing at all. He lifted her up
and she grabbed the highest part of the fence, climbed to the top and hovered, half clinging, half standing, before she jumped to the other side. Not bad; graceful, even. He followed her over, feeling slow. His jaw bore down as he made it across, his head still feeling heavy from the accident.

  When he straightened, he caught her watching him with a frown on her face, like she was trying to decide something. At least the knife wasn’t still out, though bringing a weapon showed she had sense. After a long minute when neither of them moved, she held a finger to her lips again and then gestured for him to follow her.

  There were headstones all around them, statues scattered among the clipped grass. Pain tore through his head, and he tried not to think about why they were here. One, two, three, he counted, keeping himself calm.

  Mae took off along a path that crossed through the graves, and he followed. Along the way she stopped at the statue of an angel, with wings so large they were blocking the path. Moss had grown between its fingers, outstretched and beckoning. The statue reminded him of a figurehead, a mermaid on the prow of a boat. He’d seen one like that while working at the wharf…but none of that mattered anymore. Not if Ro was here, in this place. He had to know for sure.

  “This way,” Mae whispered, nodding toward the back of the cemetery.

  He kept following her. Having her here with him made it easier to imagine Ro. If her sister was here, then Ro would appear soon too. She’d shout out his name, say it was all a joke. Her worst, most god-awful prank of all. Mae would turn to him and admit she’d been put up to it. Ro was manipulative, but she always let you know you were being manipulated, which made the difference. It made it okay—somehow you wanted to do what she asked no matter what.

  His shin scraped against a headstone and he glanced up, getting his bearings. He’d wandered off the path. Mae was far ahead now; he could see her messenger bag at her hip, the strap pulled tight across her chest. She moved quick and quiet, as if used to walking around at night, and he picked up his pace.