by Alyson Hagy
The writing was her sister’s.
She looked at the page twice, three times. She made herself read each sentence. But the evidence inscribed there didn’t change, not one serif. Her sister? Her sister’s handwriting? How could it be? Brimming with shock, she snatched at both sheets of paper and thrust them into the lamp’s wavering flame until they began to burn. She held the withering, scorching sheets as long as she dared, watching the neat paragraphs shrink into oily ash with something like hatred in her heart. When it became impossible for her to breathe the smoke-scoured air swirling through the parlor, she covered her mouth and tucked herself backward into the front hallway, trying not to stagger. Surely, she would find Mr. Hendricks hunkered down in supplication or fraudulence on her front porch—waiting for her. The imposter writing must have come from him. He was engaged in an elaborate trick upon her. He was not to be trusted. And she would deal with him accordingly.
Except Hendricks wasn’t on the porch, damn him. Only the three-colored beagle was there, tick-spotted and snoring. It took several swift kicks to rouse the unwanted animal and drive it from her door. But the dog’s departure did nothing to lessen her panic. A message from her sister? It wasn’t possible. Her sister had been dead for five years. Or was it ten? She sometimes had trouble remembering. Still, there had to be an explanation for the new page in Hendricks’s letter. There had to be an answer. And she would find it. Even so, as much as she tried to steady herself with confidence and logic, she could not summon the courage to look toward the road bridge and the purposeful shape of her sister’s white-stoned cairn.
She dressed meticulously in an attempt to waylay her fears. Stout shoes, woolen socks, her father’s canvas trousers hemmed to match her height. It was still dark. She buttoned herself into a thick jacket and wrapped her left hand around her sturdy staff. This time, when she stepped out the door, she whistled for the dogs. And they came to her. The beagle, which seemed unfazed by her inconstant attitudes. The brindle sight hound. The rat catcher whose eyes shone as passionless as a fox’s. And a new one—a bowlegged creature whose head resembled a white fist of bone. They had been close by. Surely they had not allowed Hendricks, or anyone else, into the house—a fact that troubled her even more.
“Come,” she said. “We need to make a visit.” And they strung themselves after her as she began a quick march toward the road.
She paused only briefly at the cairn, just long enough to perform a defiance she didn’t truly feel. The cairn worried her. Just standing next to it made her heart feel the size of a pumpkin seed. “Don’t mess with me, sister,” she hissed, knocking at the bottom course of white stones with her staff. “I don’t recommend you taunt me. You might not like the answers to the questions you’ve decided to ask.”
The camp of the Uninvited, low-slung and half-planned, lay like beaten tin beneath the dented glow of the clouds. She ordered the dogs to wait near the road, and she walked toward the camp alone, humming, making noise, lest she be mistaken for a raider of some kind. As she approached the tangle of one of her own neglected hedges, she heard the thrash of something alive from within its branches. Her heartbeat pounced into her wrists. Hens, she told herself. It’s not ghosts come to take you to hell; it’s only roosting hens.
One of the younger men met her, a guard layered in mismatched shirts and armed with a slender knife. He was pale-skinned with the deep-set eyes and long teeth of those born on the shores of the great northern lakes. The fevers had been terrible there, terrible enough to drive entire towns south in search of solace or a cure.
“Council,” she said. The man nodded. The Uninvited were patient with her requests. They were grateful she continued to welcome them on her land. The man led her expertly among the tents and scavenged awnings, finding paths where there seemed to be none, moving with both stealth and dignity. The camp was nearly quiet, but she could hear the slight coughing of children and the weary predawn murmur of adults. Roosters would begin to crow soon, and pigs would stir and grunt. She wondered where Estefan was. He didn’t seem to have parents. She had never been able to tell who cared for him. She could have brought him a gift, something in exchange for the flowers and eggs he sometimes brought to her. If only she had been herself when she left the house. If only she hadn’t been so … so disturbed.
“Le conseil,” the man said in his northern language, pulling aside a heavy blanket. “The ones who speak for us today.” He gestured that she should enter the featureless dark beyond. The council was always changing its location and membership, always hosting its petitioners in a different makeshift room. The Uninvited did not give authority to a single group of people for very long.
“Buenas noches, mi perdita,” a soft voice said. “You have come to tell us something.”
“I have,” she said, trying to reckon her heartbeat with the sharp scent of burned sugar that filled the room. She was sorry the voice wasn’t one she recognized. “Thank you for seeing me at this hour. I’m grateful. I have a visitor at the house, a stranger man, and he’s been a bother to me.”
“No, ooman,” said another voice, this one deeper and smoother with its syllables, a male voice from the coastal islands where enormous plantations had once thrived. “The man’s no bother. It’s the journey that bothers. You must prepare for travel. Please sit to rest with us.”
It was like this sometimes, the council acting only as a voice, or voices—speaking from where they couldn’t be seen. She had dealt with them face-to-face before, many times. But she didn’t get to choose when she saw them and when she didn’t. Only the council chose.
“I’m not taking a journey, not a real one. There’s a letter the man wants delivered. I said I would carry it for him. I’m supposed to speak it out loud in the place he once lived. I’m supposed to help him find forgiveness. But something … wrong … has occurred. Something I don’t understand. I’m not going to make the trip.”
“You travel already, friend,” said a third voice, drier than the others, perhaps from age. “The long road is beneath your feet, whether you choose it or not. This is the way of all people. Let us call the boy. He brings you calm.” Then she heard nothing more, not even whispering among those who were hidden from her, although she knew Estefan had been sent for. She flexed her shoulders under the weight of her coat, her heart ticking within her as loud as any clock.
“I’m here for advice about my hands,” she said into the black space of the room, suddenly hoping to redirect the conversation. She had been wrong to come. It was foolish to ask the council about what she’d seen in her parlor. The Uninvited believed her sister was practically divine. They wouldn’t understand why she was upset by interference with Hendricks’s letter. They would consider communication from her sister a good sign, a blessing. “I’ve been drinking the marrow soup you recommended. Yet my hands continue to shake.”
“Tssssst, friend,” the third voice replied. “We won’t talk about your hands today. You are here to find purpose. Sit.”
She sat. The floor space was uneven with carpets. Closer to the ground, the air was even heavier with the torched scent of sugar, harder to breathe. Soon, a small figure tumbled through the blanketed doorway, half-awake, smelling of goat’s milk and grass. Estefan. Smiling the smile of the drowsy. Not surprised to see her. He settled close, his trumpet cradled in his arms. She was pleased at how warm he felt.
“We have no news of your sister, ooman,” said the second voice, the deep one from the islands. “There is no talk of her here, not for many days—although you think about her very much, and she is the reason you come to us this night. From us, there are the tributes to her only. And much gathering of food and wood for the winter. We are grateful to be your guests. We will not overstay our welcome.”
She tried to place a palm on the woozy tangle of Estefan’s head. Her whole body, not just her beleaguered hands, seemed on the verge of uncontrolled trembling. It was wise to be honest with the council. They had little tolerance for deceit. And they somehow k
new what had actually driven her to see them. She began again. “I … I believe my sister has tried to frighten me. She has … interfered with the letter I’m writing for the man. She has written some part of it herself, and I can’t … I don’t understand why she would do that. I thought you might. You have always understood her. You have maintained the … the connection in ways I haven’t. Can you tell me? Are you communicating with her? Does she want the man for herself?”
There was the sound of scratching—of claw on fabric—from behind the blankets. And a considerable delay. When the next voice came, it was the first one, breathy and soft. It sounded stilted, as if it had been coached. “That would be fair, wouldn’t it, mija? You took something from your sister when she did not want it taken. The world seeks its balance.”
She drove her eyes into the darkness, hoping she might see movement, the outline of a woman’s jaw or a man’s shoulder, something, anything that would give her an anchor. If only she could see a face. “I’d bring my sister back if I could,” she said, feeling the boy nestled against her leg. “You must know that.”
“Are you sure, friend? We would bring her back. All the Uninvited would see your sister alive again with gladness in their hearts.” It was the third voice once more, sinewy and confident. “You mustn’t fool yourself. You played a part in your sister’s healing work. Then you stopped that work. Now your neighbors fill themselves with old wants. They are greedy and restless. They desire what you have and what you share with others. They do not like us. You must be ready for what comes next.”
“Nothing needs to come next. I’ll get rid of the man. He doesn’t deserve his letter. And I’ll maintain peace with the Altices. Willem is reasonable. I know how to bargain with him. My sister has been … gone for years. That’s all I want, for things to stay as they are.”
“You are mistaken,” said the first voice, sighing. “Think about what you know, mija. Open your eyes. Remember your dreams. Your sister has never left you.”
“Who takes care of this boy?” she asked, unnerved, not wanting to hear another syllable about her sister.
“Estefan makes his own prayers,” said the second voice, fading below a whisper. “It’s all a child can do.”
“Are your men running patrols?” she asked. “Has there been sickness?”
But there were no more words. It was sometimes like that, as well. The council would close itself as tight and silent as a drawer.
Assurance. She’d been wrong to seek such a thing—especially from the contingent democracy of the Uninvited. No one deserved assurance these days, especially not her. She had posed a riddle to the council and been met with riddles in return. She got to her feet and stepped through the draped doorway into the smoky patina of dawn. Estefan followed, looking up at her with dulled and dreamy eyes. The bell of his trumpet was as inviting as the red throat of an enormous flower. In the past he’d been allowed to escort her through camp. He played new notes for her, leading the way. But this time he was quickly surrounded by those who waited for them both, silent men and women, their faces flat and careful and grim. Their chilled caution was as pervasive as their frowns.
“Estefan,” she whispered as the boy was taken away before she was prepared to see him go. “Good-bye, Estefan.” She watched him leave. She wanted to believe she had seen friendliness smeared across his face.
Only one old man remained behind, bent in the spine and nearly toothless. He bowed to her, as some of those who camped on her land did, before he turned on the flapping soles of his sandals. He clapped his hands together in a slow way that scuffed the hard skin of his palms as he walked in front of her, and the clapping—soft though it was—drew people to the doors of their piecemeal dwellings. Some of them joined in the clapping. Others didn’t acknowledge her in any way save through the intense focus of their eyes.
When she was at the edge of the maze-like settlement, a woman stepped close, her thin hands curved into the shape of a bowl.
“Please,” the woman said, reaching forward. “Please, just for you.” It was bad luck to refuse a tribute, so she met the woman’s fingers and grasped at the small bundle that lay there. The woman’s face, she saw, was eroded with rivulets of grief. A mother, she thought. One of the thousands of former mothers.
“Thank you,” she said, and the woman bowed so deeply it made her ashamed.
The dogs were waiting near the road, all four, their muscled backs sleek with dew. She didn’t speak to them. She bypassed the cairn. She bypassed the thin scatter of Hendricks’s camp as well. When she was up against the hard, brick hunch of her house, she unwrapped the bundle the woman had offered to her. Under a shroud of much-laundered cotton was a thong of bleached goatskin. Strung along the thong, separated by angry knots, were the skeletons of three locusts. The sight of those empty-eyed insect husks made her bones go cold. It had been years, but she would never forget the locusts and their maddening summer song. They had sawed and chirred and bred and died while so much was taken from the people who listened to them sing.
Three skeletons. Three children lost to the fevers. That was how she interpreted the gift. Was she being blessed by the woman from the camp, or cursed? She wasn’t sure. She wrapped the locusts back into their cloth with shivering fingers. The council hadn’t helped her. She couldn’t blame them for not providing an explanation about her sister. Or offering counter charms or prayers or something she could pretend to believe in. The Uninvited had loved her sister fiercely when she had not. Why should they spare her now? That meant there was only one way to regain the solitude and equilibrium she craved. She would have to proceed with her plan. Despite the damage it would do to her reputation and her ability to scratch out a meager living, she would cut her ties to Mr. Hendricks. There would be no letter.
He was waiting inside the house. He had an oiled pistol stuck through his belt. Next to the pistol hung a long hunter’s knife in a leather sheath. He was squatting on the floorboards of the front hallway, regarding the stairs to the second story as a forester might regard the bole of a great and dying tree.
“I beg pardon,” he said, not even glancing her way. “I’ve took liberties.”
“You have, Mr. Hendricks. You don’t have permission to be in my house. You need to leave.”
“Things has changed. I got something I want to show you.”
“It’s nothing I need to see,” she said, starting to push past him. “I don’t need or want anything from you.”
“You don’t hear it, do you?” His gaze remained upward. “I ain’t surprised. My daddy always said I had the ears of a hound. I believe he was after your magnifier up yonder, your scope. I caught him quick as I could. He didn’t have time to do no damage.”
She made herself close and reopen her eyes while she slowly repeated his words to herself. An intruder? In her house? It couldn’t be. Who would bother? This was another wild tale of Hendricks’s, some infernal aspect of his planned invasion of her life. “Get out,” she said, pounding at the words as if they were nails. “You’re in breach of our agreement. You’re a liar. I don’t believe what’s told to me by scofflaws.”
“You needn’t roar at me,” he said, finally turning, his expression attentive but untroubled. “You’ll find the boy in one of them rooms. He ain’t been hurt much, though I did relieve him of his little hatchet. He’s trussed up and waiting. I’ll be in the yard, if that’s your druther.”
“Out,” she said, the word feeling like a hard silver scale on her tongue.
“Yes, ma’am.”
But it was as he described. She found the boy, Tul, tied hand and foot in one of her moldy upper rooms. He’d been writhing in the floor dust. His clothes were tarnished with it.
“Tul Boitnott,” she said, breathing over him as she tried to sort through his possible motives. “There’s them who cook and eat the children that tumble into their larders. You must know that. You must have heard the gossip about me.”
The boy nodded, his brown eyes as wary as a tur
tle’s.
“You should be afraid. Why are you here? I’ve been looted a dozen times. I have nothing but my papers and vellums and inks. You could ask for those, and I’d give them to you. I can’t believe anyone in your family would have interest in my telescope. We’ve learned to leave each other alone. We have an understanding. What’s induced this folly?”
The boy said nothing.
“I doubt you’re the general of this army,” she said, making herself think. “You must be looking for something else, something I don’t have. Or you’ve been asked to create a disruption, to distract me. And there must be others helping you.” She paused, reviewing all the oddities of the night. The boy’s intrusion couldn’t be related to the strange appearance of her sister’s handwriting. That wasn’t possible. But the council had warned her about her neighbors and their growing “wants.” Both the Uninvited and the Altices were on edge for some reason. Newly agitated. All too stubborn. It wouldn’t take much to tilt the balance of peace, and tilt it quickly. She would have to proceed carefully if she hoped to maintain the upper hand. “Even if you are a cowardly Boitnott, I doubt you’ll speak freely to me. You’d rather take the consequences than tell who put you up to this. Am I right?”
The boy nodded for a second time.
“Then I’ll have to make a tribunal with Mr. Hendricks,” she said, scanning the boy’s dirty face. His nostrils were rimmed with blood. “I’ll call for judges among those who live in the bottomland,” she continued. “The Uninvited will help me decide what to do with you.” Her declaration produced a hard quiver across the bluish skin of the boy’s neck. That simple sign was all she needed.
She descended the stairs feeling overburdened with weariness. She pressed open the heavy front door and called out for Hendricks. “The apologies are mine,” she shouted. “I leapt to the wrong conclusions. You’ve done me a true favor.”