The Breathless

by Tara Goedjen

  “We’re related,” he said, then shook his head. “No. We can’t be. No way.” He felt nauseous, like he might be sick again. Ro had seen the ring and thought they were family. His hands were shaking, and then Mae touched his elbow. He tore his eyes from the page to look at her.

  “My dad was adopted,” she said softly. “I just found out….I don’t think Ro knew.”

  He took a step back, all of it sinking in, flooding over him. If only she were here right now. If only he could tell her.

  “So actually,” Mae said, “you’re the true Cole.”

  He stared down at the sketch of the ring, hardly believing it. But it was his, all right. Back when Ro had first told him about her family book it reminded him of what his mother used to tease him about. I suppose you’re like your daddy, thinking you got magic in your blood. Thinking you’re special. He’d chalked up Ro’s book as coincidence—there were plenty of stories of old magic in the South, that was what he’d told himself—ignoring all the signs that it could be something more. That his mother could have been talking about the same sort of thing. But his dad had left them when he was a little kid, and she’d hated those stories ever since.

  “Did you know you had roots here?” Mae asked. Before he could answer, she pressed on. “Is that why you came?”

  “My uncle offered me a job in Gulf Shores.” He’d moved over this way for work, but Ro was the one who’d brought him to Blue Gate. “I stayed because I met your sister.” And meeting her had felt like home. Funny, he kind of felt the same way around Mae now. If he was being honest.

  “I never expected this…,” Mae said, trailing off. She got that distant look again.

  “Never would’ve expected any of this, Mae.” It was strange as hell that he’d ended up at Blue Gate, back where his family was from—but that didn’t really matter, not now, at least. What mattered now was the book. “You got this off Lance after you said you couldn’t. Ro’d be proud.”

  Mae shrugged; there was a flush over her neck. “You’re a Cole,” she said. “So the way I see it, it’s yours.”

  “Only one reason why I want it.” He looked into her eyes to ask permission, holding back the urge to touch her cheek. “Are we going to try this or what?”

  She searched his face, maybe to see if he meant it. The start of a smile came to her lips, as if she was satisfied with what she saw. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  —

  In the woods there was a hush in the air—but Cage felt stronger, hopeful even, and it was because of Mae. She was moving fast and quiet through the dark like it was second nature, and then they were finally breaking out from under the trees.

  Ahead the cemetery was lit by moonlight. She climbed up the iron gate with her heavy bag over her shoulder and dropped to the other side, and he followed her.

  Together they passed the statue of the angel, then went all the way back to the blackened tree and her grave. They stood there for a minute, staring at each other, until Mae pulled the book from her bag and opened it.

  “I brought what we need,” she said. “At least I think so.”

  “Tell me what to do.” He wasn’t sure of anything, just that they had to try it.

  He glanced up at the sky, the scatter of stars overhead, the moon, and when he looked back at Mae she was sitting down. He sat too, the grass damp and cool. The green book was on her lap and her legs were folded underneath her the way a kid would sit. Behind her was the spindly old tree that’d been split by lightning, and the headstone, the etching of Ro’s name.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  It was like Mae knew things about him before he did, because now he could feel his head throbbing, his insides still hot. “Better than I look.” It was painful to be here by Ro’s grave, to think about raising her, but he didn’t want to change his mind. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  “I don’t like it either,” she said, seeing straight through him again, all the way to his soul, but she opened the green book anyway. Watery moonlight fell over its pages.

  “Do you want to do it?” he asked.

  Mae paused, holding a flashlight over the last page. “This is it. I think you should read. I’ll help.”

  She leaned forward and handed him the book, and when he took it his heart hurled against his ribs. Then she set a crumpled piece of notebook paper beside it and he blinked, realizing what he was staring at. He’d dug it up near the cherub.

  “First we should think of how we love her,” Mae said. “Hold her in our minds and our hearts.”

  Touching the book was weird; it was warm and humming under his fingers, or maybe he was shaking. He glanced up, saw Mae’s hands balled tight—she was nervous too. She was whispering something, it sounded like Good deeds for good, and then she was saying Ro’s name over and over.

  Think of Ro. Cage imagined her. Her green eyes with that gold coming through around the irises. The gap between her front teeth. The way she laughed so loud, like it was shooting all the way up her spine, bursting from her entire body.

  He looked over at the choppy dirt and grass, the pair of graves. What would his mother think about what they were trying, what would Ro’s dad? His head started to throb again as Mae grabbed her bag. She reached for his hand and turned it up, and then dropped Ro’s gold locket into his palm. He made a fist, felt the cool metal against his skin.

  “Keep holding it,” she whispered. She dug into the canvas again and placed a shoe box in front of him, and then a bundle wrapped in a red sweatshirt, a paper bag that looked greasy at the bottom, and a jar with something dark floating inside it. He did a double take. It was a hoof, a horse’s hoof.

  He turned to Mae, found he was speechless.

  “I didn’t kill them,” Mae said. “They were…already dead.”

  “You didn’t kill them,” he repeated slowly. His head was hurting even more now; it felt like someone was pressing down with pliers.

  “Are you ready?” She flicked on her flashlight and the page in front of him glowed. She glanced over her shoulder, looking toward the cemetery gate, the narrow path. “I think we should start.”

  “Okay.” He stared down at the book, and the ink went sideways. There was a smell in the air, a stinking sweetness, and now it felt like the pliers were digging into his eyeballs. He blinked.

  On the page was the heading A Ritual for a Raising. Below it were words in clumsy writing. Down at the bottom of the page was the smeared thumbprint. He knew he was stalling, but he wasn’t sure why.

  “Okay,” he said again, louder now, and then read the first line. “ ‘Harbor love in your heart, while in your hand hold the loved one’s belongings.’ ” His voice sounded jerky to his ears. “ ‘Then begin the offerings. For death feeds life as blood feeds the ritual.’ ” His tongue felt mangled, almost like he’d been hit in the mouth. “ ‘And little creatures show the way.’ ”

  He didn’t dare look at Mae, didn’t dare slow down. Keep going, keep going. “ ‘A cat for nine,’ ” he said as Mae pushed the red sweatshirt in front of him. He stared at her as she unrolled it. Inside was the little black stray. His stomach heaved, but he had to keep reading.

  “ ‘A bird for vision,’ ” he said, onto Ro’s copy now, that pink pen over the notebook page. Mae slid the shoe box on the grass in front of him, the blackbird inside half eaten by ants. The smell rose and clung to his nostrils. He guessed what was coming next and forced himself to look back at the book.

  “ ‘A horse for the passage,’ ” he said, dreading each word. Mae set down the jar, a single hoof inside it. Hell, this had better be worth it.

  “ ‘A snake for new skin.’ ” There went the paper bag, the snake dropping onto the grass as she shook it out. It was a dark olive color, a cottonmouth with its head chopped off.

  “ ‘Laid out in a row of four, only this will open the door.’ ” The night around them was quiet, not even a breeze, and he felt drowned by the heat. His sweat was dr
opping onto the paper, onto his hands, which were covered in something black and dusty.

  Mae was whispering again—“Roxanne Elizabeth Cole, Roxanne Elizabeth Cole”—her voice burrowing into his brain as the letters on the page blurred. But he kept on.

  “ ‘Then save the most brutal for last.’ ” He paused, stumbling over the next word. “ ‘Chana for a life, since all should be equal. Do these tasks and see the return,’ ” he read, “ ‘except if the earth has traveled the sun.’ ”

  He’d reached the end of the ritual; there was nothing more to do. He looked up, and a coldness hit him right in the chest. Across from him on the ground, Mae was sitting with her back straight. Her hands were gripping her knees and she wasn’t moving, was hardly breathing. The worry snake slithered up his throat, and he thought he might gag. He could feel someone’s breath, right in his ear. It had to be Mae.

  “I can feel her,” she whispered.

  The blackened tree behind Ro’s grave started swaying. Everything else was still—the woods were quiet, unmoving, the cemetery silent. The angel statue was a gray ghost in the night, and there were the spikes of cut flowers beside the graves and the shadowy hunch of the empty caretaker hut. Nothing else moved, not a leaf. All was quiet and still. Except for the tree, which was slanting beside them.

  Mae’s eyes were squeezed shut and the branches behind her were wavering.

  “Do you see it?” Cage asked. “Do you…?”

  She opened her eyes and in them he saw fear and he felt it himself, it crawled up his spine, up to his heart, all the way up to his skull.

  He could hear something now, faint. Almost like a voice—only it wasn’t coming from outside, not from the cemetery or the night air—it was coming from inside him. He shut his eyes and felt his ears hollow out like he was underwater and then his insides went panicky and he couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe, it was like he was dead. He was so tense he felt himself separating from his body, or growing out from his body, and then he wasn’t just his skin and blood and bone but also the earth around him and the little stones and the grass in the cemetery and the dark sky above—he was all those things at once, he was either dead or all of life itself. When he opened his eyes, time slowed and lengthened and he looked down and saw he was standing now, that he and Mae both were, and now they were turning, stepping toward the gate because they could hear the creak of hinges and it was her—he knew it was her, she’d found her way back, she’d come home to them and his head was splitting like he was being broken apart and the air was cold, so cold, and the gate swung open, and…it was not Roxanne—it was not Roxanne.

  The thing stuck its head through the gate. Mae let out a rush of breath beside him and the deer turned and sprinted off, its hooves fast against the dirt.

  He could breathe again. He took a step toward Mae, felt for her hand, and gripped it tight. Her face was wet, she’d been crying. She looked stricken; she’d lost her sister all over again.

  The book was on the ground next to Ro’s grave, but it seemed wrong. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to see—Ro coming through the gate? Ro, alive, like none of it had ever happened?

  He was still holding Mae’s hand and her thumb was circling his palm and he watched the small movement, it was the tiniest whirlpool, and then he remembered his dream—how strong Ro was, how she always knew what to go after in life. Maybe it’d just been his imagination, or maybe she’d really come to him in his sleep, but he knew suddenly that he was in this cemetery not for her but for him. He was the one who wouldn’t let her go. He felt himself sweating all over, the fever was back, rolling over him like a wave, and then Mae pulled her hand away from his.

  She sank to the ground, knelt as if praying. He looked down at her small shoulders and thought of Ro, how he would’ve done anything to save her. But she wouldn’t want this, not this way. Ro had never needed saving her whole life and didn’t need it now.

  He replayed the memory of her over and over again. He wanted a wormhole, he wanted to stretch out the past, go back to that very moment when she was still alive on the boat, so he could tell her goodbye one last time. But it wouldn’t have changed things and now she was gone, and the only person beside him was Mae.

  He knelt down next to her. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded, still mute.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I thought it would work.” She turned to him. “The sacrifices, the ritual. We did everything right,” she said. “I thought, I almost thought…”

  He shook his head. He’d read everything in the book, exactly how it was written. He hadn’t missed a thing. The grief in Mae’s eyes cut into him. It was his own pain too, like looking at himself in a shard of glass. He got a flash of green kudzu, those vines covering him, wrapping around his bones so tight. Maybe they’d messed up the ritual, or maybe they had done it—and it just took time to work. Or maybe they were both in a bad way, so confused they didn’t know what was real anymore. But he wouldn’t say a thing because he didn’t want to see Mae upset again.

  She sniffled, wiped at her eyes. “The worst thing is, a part of me was scared that it was her.”

  “Why?”

  She looked down at her hands and something twisted inside him. “Don’t get upset if I tell you.”

  BLUE GATE, 1860

  HIS BROTHER BEGS HIM NOT to go inside, but Grady doesn’t listen. He tells Jacob to wait in the woods, makes him swear to stay away from the house. Then Grady finds his father in the dining room, lighting his pipe. It reeks of sweetness, and the smoke makes his eyes water.

  Grady stops at the archway of the room, keeps the ax at his side. His throat tightens and he wants to cry, but he can’t in front of this man. He’s afraid he won’t be able to say what he needs to.

  His father speaks first. “I did you a favor. Do you know how people would talk?”

  Grady’s mouth won’t open. Through the pipe’s trickle of smoke he doesn’t see the dining room, the window seat, or the sleek wooden cabinet. Instead he sees the burned-out cabin and glowing embers. He sees bones in ash.

  “Jacob was there. He saw everything.” Finally the words come, and Grady’s surprised by how calm he sounds. “I know it wasn’t an accident.”

  “I warned you the first time,” his father says. “I told you never to go there again.”

  Grady knows what he means. He means to the witch’s cabin. He means Pearl and Hanna. “You killed the woman I loved.”

  His father sweeps flecks of tobacco off the table with his handkerchief. “What do you know of love?” His blue eyes narrow. “You disgrace yourself,” he says. “You disgrace this family.”

  This is all Grady needs to hear. Even though his mother asked them to be kind to each other. Even though. His grip tightens on the ax.

  His father laughs. It’s a bitter sound that hangs in the air. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  Grady steps toward him, stopping at the table. “This is to fix what you’ve done.”

  His father loved his mother, Rose, but now she is dead. With her gone, there’s no goodness left in him.

  Grady steps closer. His father takes the pipe out of his mouth and glares.

  “I refuse to fight you,” he says, but the challenge is in his eyes. It’s always been there. The ax trembles in Grady’s hand.

  “You will put that down and apologize.” His father glances at his pocket watch. “Don’t make me say it again.” His mouth is hard, pressed tight with conviction.

  Hanna, Hanna, Hanna, Grady thinks. God, our son too. Hanna, Lucky—they’re all he can think of, always. He knows what he’s doing is wrong, but his father killed them. He killed them and he’s not sorry and there’s no other way. Grady’s jaw bears down and his heart feels like it’s exploding in his chest and he can’t live without her, he can’t, and he won’t. Then he moves so fast that it’s all a blur.

  The first thud makes his ears ring, and they’re still ringing as he drags his father’s body from the house. H
e sees Jacob watching from the trees and calls for him to help. There’s another small bird in his brother’s shirt pocket and his cheeks are wet.

  “I’m making things right,” Grady says. “Don’t you understand?” Jacob stares at him with teary eyes and shakes his head. “Help me anyway,” Grady tells him.

  His brother’s eyes well up again but he takes their father by the ankles while Grady holds under his shoulders as they limp into the woods. After they reach the burned ground where the cabin once stood, he yells at Jacob to leave. When he doesn’t listen, Grady shoves him, and only then does his brother turn and run. Watching him go makes Grady feel like he’s choking on ash. He feels like his lungs are going black, his heart too. But there’s no stopping now.

  “I did it,” he says.

  In front of him, Pearl is standing near what used to be the fireplace. A barn cat is in her arms, along with the book, half hidden by her long white hair. At her feet are two woven baskets. The baskets are moving.

  “I’m ready,” he tells her, setting his father’s body on the ash. The chest wound is seeping; his mouth is half open. Even though he’s dead, Grady’s afraid of him.

  “This is his doing,” he says to Pearl, hardening his voice so she can’t see how scared he is.

  “Yes. This is his night.” Pearl’s jaw tightens and she shuts her eyes like she’s praying. Her hair lifts around her in the breezeless air. When she nods, he knows it’s time.

  Grady opens the book, sees his fast handwriting down the page, the ink just dry. It’s the ritual he needs—the one Pearl recited to him before he took the ax to the house.

  Now there’s nothing left to do but go through with it; there’s nothing left for him if he can’t bring her back. He starts to read from the book and all sense of time disappears and then suddenly he’s at the end and it’s finished, it’s finally over, and he’s covered in blood. He collapses to the ground, his knees hitting the earth, the book falling from his hands.

  Pearl touches Grady’s shoulder and all her fierceness leaves her. She is crying, and she never cries. She is crying because she was too late to save her daughter—she was away when Grady’s father came. She doesn’t know Hanna heard him in the woods and gave the baby to her brother, telling him to run. Hanna stayed behind in the cabin, believing love was stronger than the darkness that was coming. But sometimes terrible things come to pass, and they can never be undone. They can’t be fixed or reversed. They can only be made anew.