“Do you remember,” Black Mary says, “when we tried to run away before? You were little, just like Red Mary. We got about this far and then you turned back.”
I’m shocked. “Did I? Why would I do that?”
She shrugs. “You didn’t know any better. You didn’t know what he was like, then.”
My sides hurt. My feet are blistered, but I know that if I stop, he’ll catch me. There was something wrong last night, something in his eyes that makes my mouth go dry.
“He’s in trouble. Maybe somebody knows. Or maybe,” Black Mary says, blood running from the corner of her mouth, “you’re too old.”
“What do you mean, too old?”
“You know what I mean.”
The snow starts to fall again. The cough from earlier deepens in my lungs.
“Are you going to die?” Red Mary asks. She’s skipping through the snow, not seeming to feel the cold. Her red hair is the only splash of color I see.
“That’s not a nice thing to ask,” Black Mary scolds. Her hair is back to its long, shiny length, her black eyes healed.
“But is she? Are you?” Red Mary turns to me.
I don’t know what to say.
Black Mary lies down in the snow. “Maybe I’ll just wait here until he finds me. Oh, he’s going to be so mad.” Her eyes glitter. “Don’t you think he’ll be mad?”
“You need to stand up,” I tell her, and pull at her arm. Suddenly I realize that she is the one who is standing. I’m lying in a snowdrift, my hair blowing over my face. I had almost fallen asleep.
“Run,” Black Mary says, and Red Mary echoes her. “Run.”
It’s getting dark now. I scramble to my knees and crawl through the snow, not strong enough to run. At least the burning pain of freezing to death makes me think of something other than my bruises.
There’s a light. It’s small and beautiful. I ask the girls if they see it.
“What light?” Black Mary asks, and she falls.
“I’m cold,” Red Mary whispers, and she also falls.
I try to drag Red Mary but I only get a few feet. She’s too heavy. I’m too cold.
“I’ll get help,” I say, but they don’t answer.
The light is coming from a window in a small house on the edge of a field. It looks like it might be painted yellow. I think my mom’s house was yellow.
“It was, when you were younger,” Black Mary says. She’s crawling through the snow with me.
“Feeling better?” I ask her.
Her eyes are like ice. “No.”
We make it to the porch. I’m on my knees, hesitating. Black Mary puts her hand on my shoulder.
“We can always go back if you want.”
I knock on the door. The bones in my hands feel like they’ll shatter from the cold.
A shadow moves in the window. I want to scream, and I do. Shadows hit and twist and bite. Shadows hurt you from the inside out.
The shadow opens the door. It is a woman. She looks at me and her hand goes to her mouth.
“Oh my goodness. Oh no,” she says. She calls over her shoulder for a blanket and some hot chocolate and the police. She looks back at me, reaching out with both hands. She touches my skin and we both draw back.
“Are you alone, sweetheart?”
Black Mary sweeps past her into the house. Red Mary sits on the porch, sucking her thumb.
“You’re too old to do that,” I tell her. I look back at the woman.
“My mom had a yellow house, I think. Do you know my mom?”
The blanket arrives. She spreads it out and I gingerly step into it, my eyes on Black Mary. She nods, and I let the woman wrap it around me and lead me inside.
“What’s your name, sweetie?” The woman is all eyes, taking in my tattered dress and ratted hair, the bruises and dried blood. I want to say that she should check on Red Mary, but the little girl seems happy. She seems okay.
My name. It’s been too long. I scribbled it on the page of a book once, but he threw all of the books away one day when he was angry.
“I can’t remember. I’m just one of the Marys.”
The woman’s voice was patient, carefully so. “One of the Marys? Which one?”
A man enters the room, saying something about the police being on their way. I see him and shrink back. He is big and tall and his hands could wrap around my throat so easily. The man looks like he wants to say something, but he only uses his big hands to pass a mug to the woman and steps away.
“Which Mary?” the woman asks again. Her eyes are soft. She shows me that the mug is full of hot cocoa.
“I don’t know. Maybe White Mary. Do you think my mom will remember me?”
Red Mary taps the woman on her thigh. “We’re all Mary here,” she tells her, but the woman doesn’t look at her. Not once. She doesn’t even seem to notice.
FLAT, FLAT WORLD
“Sometimes I just want to take a step backward off the flat, flat world,” the girl said to no one in particular. She was alone, lying under the newly shorn tree that had once been so glorious. It was broken now, like everything else. It had no glitter. The tree shook its limbs valiantly and only a few dead leaves fell into the girl’s hair. The tree hung its branches low. It had meant to tremble flowers.
The girl didn’t notice the dead leaves, or the creeping spider that had landed in her hair as well. She was busy staring into nothing. The spider perched in her hair, fancying itself a butterfly. This wasn’t to be so.
The girl rolled onto her back, sighing as she noticed the blue piece of chewing gum stuck to the tree’s bark. “They’ve gotten you, too,” she said, and the tree nodded, although neither had any idea who “they” were or what, exactly, they had done.
The girl stood up then, which was unfortunate because the spider chose at that moment to leap from her hair, flapping his eight legs furiously as a butterfly would. The wind sent it spiraling into the chewing gum, still faintly sticky, and three of its legs were held fast. It dangled and struggled and pulled, then hung limply. It contemplated its fate, wondering if it had the courage to pull the three legs off in order to save the other five.
The tree was merciful. It slapped a long branch against the gum. The girl noticed none of this, just concentrated on placing one foot in front of the other as she walked away. Her body left no imprint in the grass where she had been lying and her footsteps didn’t make a sound.
Nobody saw her as she floated by, brown leaves falling from her hair.
Once again, the tree wished for flowers.
She fell asleep while on the floor of her apartment, watching for a mouse to pop out of the hole in the baseboard. In truth there was no mouse, and she knew this, but perhaps if she hoped with enough fervor one would appear.
In her dream, a flood came and swept her away. She watched her hair sway like seaweed, in its element like it belonged to a nymph. She turned to face herself and smiled.
“I don’t want to surface,” she said, and promptly drowned.
The tide pulled her along, her fingers loose and relaxed, her curious dead eyes the same color as the sea. She briefly worried that the floating, swirling white dress she was wearing had pushed up and was exposing too much pale thigh, but dismissed the thought easily. The sea can be a gentle lover when it wishes, and really, what’s a little leg? She felt envious watching her empty body spin lazily in the current.
Well, I don’t want to surface, either, she thought. But she did surface, waking up cold and stiff on her kitchen floor. The mouse still hadn’t been wished into being, despite how many crackers she had placed in front of the hole. Maybe tonight she would learn to pray.
She slipped on a soft robe and sank down into the chair at the vanity. The hair pins made a clinking sound as she pulled them from her hair and tossed them into a bowl before picking up her brush. She had scarcely brushed a stroke when her eyes caught somebody else’s in the mirror.
“It’s you,” she said.
“It’s me.”
“Yes,” he said.
“I thought so.”
Her hair began to shine. The leaves and cobwebs fell out of it and hit the floor with the sound of chimes. She thought of stars.
“I might have a mouse,” she said.
“Yes,” he said again.
He came by every so often, leaning against the wall, looking at the palms of his hands, not acknowledging her before leaving. She never remembered what he looked like when he was gone. She had never asked his name.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
No, it didn’t.
He set the silver brush down and pulled her to her feet. Putting one hand on the back of her head, he kissed her.
She returned the kiss dutifully and without passion. Her hands rested on either side of his face, pressing against the solid bone beneath his skin. She traced the features of his skull with her fingers, and her skin shimmered and passed through like fog.
The girl took a step back in vague surprise. He took a deep breath, and a swirl of vapor left her body and passed through his lips, down into his lungs. She felt that part of herself disappear.
She dropped her transparent fingers from his face. “I don’t like that you’re solid and I’m not.”
The man watched her with quiet eyes. “You didn’t want to surface,” he said.
Oh. That’s right. Somehow she had forgotten.
Her eyebrows worked as she frowned. “But I don’t want to disappear entirely,” she said. She bit her lip, looking at the ground. “I want to still be here.”
“Do you?”
Did she?
Her robe was too thin. She clutched at it, realized her hand was trembling. Her eyes met his, and she saw herself there.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. Her fingers worried the soft fabric. It was flimsy and yielding. She wanted to be dressed in crisp leaves and curls of bark. She wanted to sway under the sky. She reached out and felt the fabric of his shirt between her fingers. It was stiffer, more substantial. She imagined taking it and wrapping it around her body. She looked away in case he could see what she was thinking.
“I always know what you’re thinking.”
She ran her fingers down his sleeves, slid her hands inside. There was no warmth there. No coolness. Nothing at all.
“You don’t really exist,” she told him. His lips turned up slightly at the corners, but then it was gone. She took a step closer. “You are a figment of my imagination.” She wanted to bite the underside of his jaw to prove he wasn’t really there, but she stopped herself.
His voice, as always, held no emotion. “Does thinking this make you feel better?”
She didn’t know.
She turned from him and looked out of the window. The tree from earlier waved its branches at her happily. She timidly waved back. The tree caught a glimpse of the man behind her and suddenly snapped to attention. It held itself straight and proud, no leaf daring to drift from its branches.
The man stepped closer and pinned her arms to her sides. His mouth was close to her ear.
“I am more real than you are,” he said. His breath made wisps of her hair flutter. She was not certain her breath could do the same.
She thought about this. “Then I must not be very real at all.” This thought didn’t seem unpleasant.
He released her, started walking away. “You are as real as you want to be,” he said. He turned and smiled at her then, and it was heartbreakingly lovely. “It’s your choice, you know.”
Her choice. Yes, she thought she liked that.
The man was fading, and soon there would be nothing left. She took a small step forward.
“I...think I want to come with you.” Her voice already sounded like the wind through the trees. “I want to see where you go. I want to see what you know.”
He held out his hand. She could barely see the outline of it. “Come, then,” he said. She reached for it, and this time his fingers felt warm and strong and substantial as they curled around hers.
Her robe collapsed into a silken pool on the ground. It was exactly right. Outside, the tree bowed deeply. Your majesty. Your majesty.
EXTRAORDINARY BEAST
He made her anxious. He made her anxious.
A tall, thin thing, a modern day Spring-Heeled Jack. His voice, when he spoke, was all lies and promises, sexy and deep, chartreuse and nuance and Lily of the Valley.
She should go to him, should ask his name although he would never tell. The sound of his boots against the gravel was glory. He was the sun, an extraordinary beast, and she was—what? Mortal? Something less? Her body was meat, her heartbeat redundant. He strode toward her, the knife out, his placid face screaming want.
“Do you mind,” he asked politely, “if I slide my blade under your skin, just a little?”
His smile, it was holy. And when she said, “Yes,” his eyes flashed fire.
THE BOY WHO HANGS THE STARS
Once there was a girl who was sitting by the river. She liked to watch the water, and listen to what it had to say. Usually it was nonsense, but every now and then it came up with something important.
Like today, for instance. “That boy has broken hands!” the river exclaimed, and then it abruptly snapped its mouth shut. The girl noticed that the sun was no longer in her eyes, and she looked up. There stood a strange boy with wild hair and large wings.
“Hello,” said the boy.
“Hello,” said the girl.
“What are you doing?” asked the boy.
“I’m listening to the water,” said the girl.
The boy sat down beside her. “Well, that’s interesting. I thought that water didn’t really have anything important to say.”
“Usually it doesn’t.”
The girl looked at the strange boy, whose wings fluttered every now and then.
“Your wings, do they ever hurt?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes, when I step on them.” He kicked a rock into the river.
The girl and the boy sat in silence for a long time. The water watched them.
“I think that I like you,” said the girl after a while.
The boy smiled. “I think that I like you, too.”
And that was that.
The next time the girl came down to the river, she was happy to see that the boy was there.
“I brought something for you,” she said. From the pocket of her dress, she pulled out a small rock. It was the color of water and it was shiny and it glowed a little. She put it into the boy’s hands. It slipped right through them and fell into the river.
She took the boy’s hands and held them up to her eyes. Each palm had a round, perfectly circular hole in the middle of it. She could look right through them.
“Oh,” she said.
“I told you that he had broken hands!” yipped the river. The winged boy looked very sad.
“I’m sorry that I lost your stone,” he said. “It looked very nice.”
The girl was too busy thinking about his hands to answer for a while. Finally she said, “How did that happen? Your hands?”
The boy looked at his palms. “I don’t know. They’ve always been this way. I can’t hold anything. Watch.” He reached down to the water and cupped his hands. When he pulled them back, the water ran right through the holes.
“Broken,” the water said again. It tossed the girl’s shiny stone back up to her. She held it tightly in her warm hand and thought some more.
That night, she worked hard in her living room, making a present for the boy.
The next day she went back down to the river, and waited and waited for the boy, but he didn’t show up. This made the girl very unhappy. But the next time that she went back, the winged boy was sitting on the bank, dangling his bare feet in the water.
“Where were you?” Th
e girl asked him.
“I had to sleep. I have nighttime responsibilities.”
“You do? What are they?”
The boy stretched. “Meet me down here in a few nights, and I’ll show you. I think you’ll like it. What do you have in your hand?”
The girl had almost forgotten the present that she had made. She held it out. The water stone was now dangling on a silver chain.
“Now you won’t lose it,” she said, and fastened it around the boy’s neck. The boy looked happy.
“People don’t usually give me things,” he said.
“That’s probably because you keep dropping them,” the girl answered.
“Good point.”
The boy put his hand over the new necklace. The girl could see the stone right through the hole in his hand.
“I won’t lose this,” he promised.
“I know you won’t,” she said.
“I think I’m hungry,” said the girl. “Would you like to come back to my home and get something to eat?”
“Why not?” said the boy, and they stood up and walked through the forest to the village.
The village was full of colors and lights, and flower petals floated through the air. The people rushed back and forth in a hurry, but nobody even took notice of the girl. They all stopped to stare at the boy, however. He tried very hard not to notice.
“This is a pretty village,” said the boy.
“It’s not so bad,” the girl replied.
She walked past old men and young men and women carrying little children, but nobody even turned to look at her. She knelt down to pet a furry dog, which barked and licked her hand, and its owner looked at it strangely. Although not as strangely as he was looking at the boy.
“It’s your wings, you know,” said the girl. “They’re very beautiful. And we’ve never seen wings on anybody before.”
The boy stretched out one wing to examine it, and everybody in the village oohed and aahed. “I’ve just always had them, so they’re perfectly normal to me. How do you fly without your wings?”
The girl smiled at him. “You don’t.”
Beautiful Sorrows Page 2