Somewhere to Dream (Berkley Sensation)

by Graham, Genevieve

  Ah, Ruth. I have to stop thinking of her, because my heart breaks anew every time her face flits through my memory.

  And yet the story must be told, and Ruth played a part in it, no matter how brief.

  A dozen men came in the afternoon, their sweating horses stirring up dry dirt as they slowed in front of our house. We weren’t often visited by anyone, living as remotely as we did, and Mama reflexively pulled our father’s rifle from the wall. I remember the clouds of dust lingering around the men, how hot air pressed urgently against my skin as we stepped through the door to see what they wanted. The heat had pushed any hint of a breeze away; the horses barely lifted their tails when flies lit.

  Maggie went still beside me, then she started to shake. Mama stepped in front of us, holding the rifle as if she knew exactly how to use it, though I don’t think she’d ever shot anything in her life.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said. “My husband will be here shortly. Is there something I can help you with?”

  One of the men seemed to be in charge. He wore a tattered blue shirt while the clothes on the others faded, almost camouflaged into the dirt. He grinned and shifted in his saddle, looking at his men while he spoke. “Well, now, missus, we all know that ain’t true, don’t we?”

  Another man called out from somewhere in the group. I only knew where he was because the others turned to laugh with him. “Ain’t no husband, ’less you’s married to a ghost,” he said.

  He was right, of course. My father had died in a wagon accident one night, and Mama had never remarried. There weren’t a lot of men to choose from out there, if a woman were looking to get married, and until that day we had done well enough without one.

  Five of the men got off their horses and started walking toward our house, carrying frayed coils of rope. It was a moment before I realized those ropes were for us. My skin prickled, and my lips felt oddly numb. Mama’s skirt trembled, but her voice was strong.

  “Hold it right there. Get right back on those horses, please,” she said. I was proud of her in that moment, but the feeling passed rapidly. She shook like Maggie did, trembling like a cornered squirrel. She lifted the rifle and pressed it against her cheek, aiming it at the men. I hoped it was loaded. “I have no wish to shoot any of you.”

  The next instant brought something I’ve tried hard to forget, but I doubt I will ever be able to do that. Why is it so easy to forget the happy times, but the ones that cut out your heart are forever etched in your mind?

  The man in the blue shirt said something to one of the men behind him. His name, I think.

  “Yes, sir,” the young man said. Quick as lightning, he pulled a pistol from his belt, aimed it at my mother, and shot her through the head. Mama flew backward and hit the door with a thud. Her bones seemed to melt, and she slid down the wall, dirty-blond hair bunching in loops behind her.

  Ruth screamed. The tortured sound went on and on, like the howls of a dog in a trap. Her voice probably carried for miles across that flat nothingness of land, but I barely heard her. I don’t know if I screamed.

  Maggie grabbed Ruth and shoved her into the house. I reached for Maggie, but a man’s arm, big enough that it felt like a tree branch, wrapped around my stomach, jerking the wind from my lungs. I inhaled a sour gust of grime and sweat as he pulled me hard against his chest. I screamed and kicked backward, jerking my head around, doing anything I could to loosen his grip, but failed. I was nothing against him. A flea on a dog. He spun me around and slammed me into the wall right beside the place where my mother’s life had ended. If I’d wanted to—if he’d let me—I could have reached out and touched the place where the bullet had pierced the wall after passing through her brain. He held my throat, but from the edge of my vision, I could see her eyes were open. Dead eyes, pale as the sky just before it clouds over. I looked away. I couldn’t bear to remember her eyes that way. And yet I do.

  I screamed through the pressure of his hand, choking on tears. I grabbed at the wrist pinning me in place, its leathery skin thick with black hairs. I yanked and twisted, but his hand didn’t budge. Through swollen, disbelieving eyes, I watched another man tie my hands in front of me. I saw the calloused fingers grip my wrists, saw him wind the rope around once, twice, then knot it with a jerk.

  “Shut your mouth,” the first man growled. He reached behind his neck with one hand, the other still anchored against my throat. He loosed the knot on the kerchief he’d had tied around his neck and yanked it off. It was filthy and smeared with old sweat. He balled it up in his hand and thrust it toward my mouth.

  “Open up,” he said.

  I clamped my mouth shut and squeezed my lips as tightly together as I could, but in the end, he jammed one disgusting finger into the side of my mouth and wedged it open. I bit down hard, and he grunted but kept at it. The stiff cloth touched my tongue, and he shoved the rest in. I didn’t want to breathe, couldn’t stand the sweet stench wafting from the cloth as it soaked in my mouth. I gagged, but he held me still, like a bug on a pin. Bile rose in my throat, but I had to swallow it back. He had no intention of letting go.

  “Lewis,” he bellowed, turning toward a couple of the men who still held the horses. “Bring me your kerchief, boy.”

  One of the others nodded and came toward us, pulling off his own neck cloth as he came. I stared at him, pleading with my eyes, sniffling, hoping he might stop this madness. Instead, he smiled. It was a half smile with something cruel lurking in it I’d never seen before. He winked, then tied the kerchief at the back of my head, pulling tight so the wad of cloth completely filled my mouth and I had no hope of shoving it out. My jaw ached from being forced open, and now the kerchief bit into my lips. I kept yelling, praying they’d stop, have mercy, but my cries were muffled and more pathetic than ever. It was getting difficult to breathe through my nose because of all the crying, and I realized I could actually suffocate. I collapsed helplessly against the man when he leaned over and scooped me up, carrying me in his arms as if I were a weightless baby. He lifted me onto his horse’s saddle, then swung up behind me, pressing his body to my back. His hands were hard as granite, holding me in place.

  I had to stop crying or I wouldn’t be able to breathe for much longer. I chewed through the constricting cloth until I could at least get my teeth around it. That way I could breathe easier through my mouth. I gasped in my sobs, trying to slow them, trying to calm myself so I could think. I had to find some way to escape.

  My sisters were dragged out of the house, and I tried to call to them, but nothing could get past the gag, wet and heavy on my tongue. Ruth was slung over a man’s shoulder, looking small for a ten-year-old. The man hardly seemed to know she was there, despite the fact her entire body struggled against his grip. A screaming Maggie fought every step, pulling against a rope until I saw blood smear her wrists. The man finally gave up the battle of towing her behind him. Avoiding the wild swinging of her arms and desperate kicks, he picked her up and carried her to a different horse. He handed her to the rider, who held her between his legs, then jammed a gag into her mouth as well.

  Fear had ruled my life for as long as I could remember, and yet I’d never really had cause. Now that I had reason, fear seemed to shrink into something far away. It was as if I lost who I was the moment the man behind me kicked his horse into a gallop. I forgot to care. Hooves pounded beneath me, forest branches slapped my face, the man’s hands gripped my thighs, holding me in place. And yet none of it seemed real.

  Part of me was terrified beyond belief. Part of me wasn’t even there. From the safety of my perch, I saw myself tied to a tree. I saw the rope had cut into my skin, rubbing it raw. I noticed I sat slumped over, unable to do anything but wait. My sisters were gone. I couldn’t see or hear them. Nor could I sense them, which I normally could do simply by closing my eyes. It was as if my world had died, leaving me alone in this nightmare.

  The first time a man put
his hands on me and tore my dress, I screamed and kicked, flailing against the ropes. My arms bled, and my legs, ripping on the bed of rocks and branches, bruising against the man’s iron grip. When he reached beneath my skirt and tore the rest of my life to pieces, I went numb.

  The second man knelt beside me, saying nothing at first, but I was so lost, so overwhelmed, I barely saw him there. When he said something, I heard just a rumble of syllables. When I didn’t look up, he grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked it back so I had to meet his eyes.

  Somewhere in the back of my consciousness, I noticed the twists of silver in his beard, the dark spots of age mottling his weathered cheeks, the mangy, matted beard. He seemed about the same age as my father, and he stunk of old tobacco, and worse. In contrast, the skin of his naked thighs was as white as a fish’s belly.

  “Just be quiet. Be quiet,” the man kept saying. “Be a good girl.”

  Be a good girl. My father had said those same words. He’d told me to be quiet, be a good girl, when my sisters and I played too loudly or sang when he wanted to sleep. This man threw one leg over me, and I twisted like a worm on a hook, but he took my throat in his hand and jammed it against the dirt. When he was done what he’d come to do, he sat back and grinned.

  I said nothing, only stared, unable to rouse a sound from my battered body. It was no longer me on the pine needle–strewn forest floor. It was a shell containing nothing. Everything was gone from me: the fight, the hope, my voice.

  But that wasn’t enough. His grin hooked on one side, then drooped into a frown. Through a fog of disbelief, I watched him flex his fists, then pull one back so it poised by his ear. His fist crashed into my cheek, my vision went white, and a sharp sting told me the skin had split beside one eye. My head snapped back, slamming into the hard ground. I squeezed my eyes closed as tightly as I could, trying to push out the pain, praying he wouldn’t do it again. I didn’t want to ever open my eyes. I feared what I might see if I looked.

  My heart thundered, and my empty stomach, for the hundredth time that day, rolled over. I wondered vaguely if I might vomit into the gag. What then? Would anyone untie it? Because if they didn’t, I was sure I would die.

  And yet I didn’t panic. Somehow, living no longer seemed all that important.

  While I lay motionless on the ground, I heard a sound I hadn’t heard before. A small mewling sound that didn’t belong in this place. Could that be a cat? Here? I opened my eyes but gasped at the tiny movement. I tried to see past the pain, concentrating on lifting my eyelids. Greens and browns blurred together, the heady aroma of dirt and leaves smeared forever into my memory. The pathetic mewling grew louder, and I realized the sound was my own weeping.

  After that, all the men and everything they did, all the violence and pain and disgust and loathing, were lost to me. I saw it all from far away. Far enough that I felt nothing. I thought, and I hoped, that I would never feel anything ever again.

  The next day, I learned they’d killed Ruth. Broke her apart, then left her in the woods to rot.

  They set Maggie and me back on horseback and headed back on the path, and when we stopped again, I knew I would rather die than face another moment with these men.

  The Cherokee saved us. They burst from the trees, sending arrows and tomahawks into the bodies of our abusers, of our mother’s and Ruth’s murderers. When the white men lay dead, bloody lumps around their dying fire, the Cherokee turned to us. They tended our wounds as well as they could, and we drank the foul tea they coaxed through our swollen lips. I remember little beside that tea, how it wet my tongue when I’d almost turned to dust. It made me sleepy. They bundled us in furs and secured us onto travois their men had fashioned and eventually dragged along the trail. Our little beds rocked and bumped behind them, but we were cushioned by a pillow of furs. For the first time since the nightmare had begun, I slept.

  When I woke, we were in a different world.

  CHAPTER 33

  What Happens Next

  It was out now: the nightmare that had consumed me for almost a year. The hardest part had been the first few words, braving that first step back into the dark. I was exhausted now. The strain of tears shed and grief relived weighted my eyelids down, yet I felt oddly light within. The memories had taken me far, far from Jesse’s side, dragging me through what I’d never wanted to see again, and in the end, I held the truth of my captors’ deaths as a solid, undeniable truth. They were gone. I was free of them. Because I had been courageous enough to face the horrors again, the hole that had gaped in my heart since that day began to ease closed, like pulling the tethers of the deerskin bags I made at the village.

  Ruth was gone, of course. That would never change, but my pain over losing her would. I’d miss her until my last breath, but now I could accept that I’d be doing that without her by my side. And having stepped into that dark world and emerging unscathed, I felt stronger again. I would survive. I might even find joy again someday.

  “Sometimes it feels as if the nightmare happened yesterday,” I told Jesse. I drooped, feeling like a cloth wrung out and hung to dry. “At others, it is more like it took place in another world, another time. To another person.”

  Jesse blinked occasionally through the story, but other than that, he didn’t move. He was so quiet I forgot he was there for a time. But I was finished now, and the silence kept on filling the forest, the weight of my confession heavy and disgusting on my shoulders. He would leave now, knowing what I was, and I would never see him again. But he’d been right. I’d needed to say it out loud, no matter the consequence.

  “So that’s why you live there,” he finally said, his voice calm as a breeze.

  I seemed to have used up all my words. My face was wet with tears, but they’d stopped rolling down my cheeks for now. I felt empty of everything. I had nothing left. Soon he, too, would be gone.

  “I had wondered what kept you there, you know. I see now.” The gold in his eyes had melted into a soft amber, like the liquid brown of tree sap in the spring. “Those men,” he said softly. “They’re all dead now? Cherokee took care of ’em?”

  I nodded, so he did, too.

  “Good. One less thing for me to do.”

  He left the support of the tree and slid closer to me, still sitting. “Can I touch you, Adelaide?” I didn’t move, so he took that as permission. He put one hand out and gently wiped the tears on my cheek with a dirty, calloused finger, gentle as the pat of a kitten’s paw. “So do I know you now?”

  “What?”

  “Sounds to me like that was the one thing between us, and now you’ve told me all about it. So do I know you now?”

  It took a shaky breath before I could nod.

  His fingers moved down until they cradled my chin. “Then it wasn’t you that I didn’t know, was it?”

  “I’m confused.”

  He dropped his hand and linked my fingers with his. I looked down, seeing the damage he’d done to his knuckles, to his arms, all done while he’d been trying to find me. The knowledge twisted in my gut.

  “It was what happened to you that I didn’t know,” he said. “But I was right. I knew you all along.”

  He leaned in and kissed me, his lips light as a butterfly’s wing against mine. A farewell kiss. Because now he knew. He surely couldn’t feel anything for me now, save repulsion.

  “And knowing this,” he continued, as if I’d spoken out loud, “changes nothing about how I feel for you. I love you, Adelaide. I think I knew that from the first time you looked at me. I knew you were scared, knew it was something awful, but it was up to you to tell me.”

  It couldn’t be possible. “You still . . . love me?” I whispered.

  His smile was so sad, trying to be brave enough for both of us under eyes that mourned with me. “I love you,” he repeated. “And whether you’ll have me or not, I’ll always love you.”

  I stared a
t him, swallowing hard, terrified this was some kind of illusion that would end if I blinked. I’d seen him in my dreams for so long, but I’d never imagined the reality of him would become so important to me. I’d tried to ignore him, to pretend he didn’t exist, to hide from any threat of another heartbreak. And he’d just kept coming, stubborn as ever. My Jesse. He kissed me again.

  “Marry me, Adelaide,” he whispered against my lips. I caught my breath and felt his crooked half smile, the soft curve of his lips barely touching mine. “What? I did ask you before, you know.”

  I shook my head, suddenly angry. “Weren’t you listening, Jesse? You can’t marry me. I’m . . . ruined. There were five of them, Jesse. Five men.”

  His smile was stronger than my confusion. “I don’t care about any of them. All I care about is you. Marry me.”

  “You still—”

  “You’re a lousy listener, Adelaide.” His smile was so tender, so full of promise. It reached in and roused my own smile, shook it awake.

  “You didn’t really ask me before. Not exactly,” I said quietly. Nerves buzzed through my fingers, raced through my gut.

  “Sure I did.”

  “No. You went on about how we could be together, but you never actually—”

  He scrambled, suddenly and painfully, onto one knee, gripping both my hands in his. “Marry me, Adelaide. Please.”

  “Get up, you fool,” I said, blushing. “You’ll open that wound in your side again.”

  “Not until you give me an answer.”

  “You already know my answer.”

  “Then say it.”

  I sighed, wrestled my hands from his and traced the smooth, swollen lines of his bruised face with my fingertips, followed the crooked, oft-broken nose. So beautiful, my Jesse. I imagined his features in a few years, then a few years after that. I banished the memory of his father’s face, similar, but sliced with deep lines of strife and anger. Jesse wouldn’t have that kind of life, I promised myself. I would give Jesse a good life. One filled with love.