Dead River

by Cyn Balog

  He scowls and storms out into the sunlit path, nearly colliding with me. The worry on his face quickly dissolves into a smile. “Hey!”

  I study him. “What was that all about back there?” When he shrugs, I say, “You looked upset. Is something wrong?”

  “Nothing for you to be worrying about,” he says, digging his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. He looks over each shoulder, for someone, I guess—my mother? “You want me to show you round now?”

  “I don’t see what the point is. She’s sending me back,” I whisper. “Did you know she could do that?”

  He gives me a small nod, then pulls on my sleeve, beckoning me back up the pathway. He leads me on a new path, which begins to slope downward, toward the river. I follow him silently, thinking about the fiends, about the sad, angry souls that still miss their human lives. Did Jack do this to me because he’s jealous of me and the life I have?

  Finally, when we’re almost near the river, Trey says to me, “Yeah.”

  “If you knew that, then why is it such a big deal? Why have you been watching me so closely—”

  “It is a big deal. You don’t understand. Your momma has powers none of us have. But it’s not an unlimited supply. Bringing someone back has never been done before, and it will weaken her. We don’t know how much. It might take away all her power.”

  “All her shine?”

  He looks at the ground. “Yeah.”

  “And then what?”

  “She’s gone. Like I said, I don’t know where. And that relation of yours? The one I told you about? That person will take over. And I don’t expect things will be very good here after that.”

  “Jack?” I ask.

  “Yeah. No. I don’t know. It’s going to be a mess here. But your momma’s right. You got another chance at life. You need to take it.”

  “You would take it?”

  “In a heartbeat.”

  “But I could take over. I could be the Mistress. Now.”

  He squints at me. “You don’t know nothing yet. And you want that? You want to leave everything behind?”

  I don’t even have to think about it now. Of course I don’t. But I would, if I were needed. I would … I stop when I realize that’s just what my mother did. And I hated her for it. I don’t want to leave my dad and have him hate me. Right now, I don’t want to think about it. So I concentrate on Trey, the edges of his form shining so very brightly. Not as luminous as I am, but for someone who has been here since the Great Depression, he’s certainly not lost a lot of his glow.

  “Your shine,” I say gently. “It’s so bright. And you’ve been here so long. It’s almost as bright as Jack’s.”

  He looks down, his face reddening. “Yeah. For a long time I wanted to go back. I was like Jack. Bitter. Angry. I volunteered to be a guide just so I could go over to the other side and see what was going on. See what I been missing. And I missed a lot. But I don’t mean to go against your momma. She’s a good lady. Treated me like my momma would’ve. I won’t do that to her.” He looks up at the sky, shakes his head. “But I come to realize there’s no point thinking about going back. It can’t happen. Not for me. Come on.”

  We reach the edge of the river. There’s a small rowboat there, tied to a stump. He motions for me to get in, so I do. “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “You’ll see.” He takes up the rope, pushes the boat out a few feet from shore, and hops in.

  As he starts to row, I’m suddenly aware what this means. We’re going across. To where Justin is. To where my father is. They won’t be able to see me. I’m remembering how I was screaming at Justin and Angela, and how they just looked through me. The thought of that empty look in their eyes makes my chest hurt. I don’t know if I could stand it if my dad looked through me the same way. “I thought my mom was going to make me alive again?” I ask. “She said that it has to be done quickly.”

  “Problem with that.” He looks over his shoulder. “We need your body. That’s what she sent me over to get.”

  I nearly choke. “My … body? Why?”

  “Well, it won’t do no good if your momma brings you to life and then a month later a fisherman stumbles on your bones, will it?”

  “Okay, okay.” I shudder at the idea of seeing my lifeless body again. “Did you get it?”

  He shakes his head. “It’s gone. Someone took it.”

  “What? Who would do something like that?”

  “Don’t know. Humans may have found it. Maybe I didn’t hide it good enough. That would be a problem.” He looks up at the sky, where the sun is beginning to slump from its highest point. “And if we don’t have it back before a search party finds it … Yeah. It will be too late.”

  I slosh in my hiking boots through what feels like thick mud. When I come up on shore and attempt to clean my boots, I realize they’re almost perfect. Trey glances at me, and I wonder how the rest of me looks. It feels like I haven’t had a shower in ages. I think of my mother, day after day, wearing the same Phillies shirt she died in years ago. I guess I don’t need to shower, and that thought makes me instantly miss the heavenly spray of hot water on my face and back. And then I look at Trey and realize I’m being stupid, that unlike him, at least I have a chance of getting back, which I’ll probably blow if I keep thinking silly things like how much I miss showers.

  “I don’t understand. What would that person do, if the person took over my mother’s rule?”

  He says, “A bad ruler here would keep the people angry and bitter, and it’s the angry and bitter people who take a long time to come to peace. They stay here.”

  “Like you.”

  “Yeah. Like me. Look how long it’s taken me to come around. The bigger the kingdom, the more power the ruler has.”

  “So wait—what you’re saying is that if my mom brings me to life again, she will weaken to the point where this person can take over? I will destroy the entire kingdom?”

  “Listen. Your momma’s gonna take care of you. Don’t give up this chance. I wouldn’t.” He steps onto a boulder and reaches for my hand, but I’m just standing there, not able to move.

  “You wouldn’t?” I mumble. “Really? I feel like a stupid brat. I got myself into this. I should just accept the consequences.”

  “Kiandra, I’ll be the first to tell you when you are being a brat. You ain’t a brat for accepting this.”

  “No, listen. Jack did this to me. He knew that my mother would try and bring me back. He wants her to do this. He wants to weaken her. If I let her do this, we’re just playing into his hands.”

  He nods, unsurprised, and starts to speak, but I put my hand up to silence him. Because, right then, I realize something. “You knew that all this time, didn’t you? Ever since I got here. That’s why you’ve been protecting me. You knew he’d try to hurt me. Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “I told you he was dangerous. What more did you want?” He’d been reaching for my hand, but now he just digs both hands into the pockets of his jeans. “You were just a girl who stepped on a hornet’s nest, is all. I thought all I needed to do was get you away from the nest. I didn’t want you to know about your momma, about this Mistress of the Waters stuff, because I knew you wouldn’t leave. I’m sorry, Kiandra, but the only way you’re gonna make your momma happy is if you do this. And I’m gonna help her.”

  “Maybe I don’t care about making her happy. Why do you follow her so blindly?” I say, my voice rising an octave. “What has she done for you that you keep bending over backward for her?”

  He doesn’t say anything, just stands there on top of the boulder, rocking on his heels. From his expression, I can’t even be sure he’s listening.

  “She’s not your mother. You may feel guilty about leaving your mother, and your mother may be a saint, but that lady across the river is not her,” I say. “My mother was dying and couldn’t even say goodbye to me. She might have been sick, but she could have had more time with me, and instead, she left. Why should I c
are about whether or not I make her happy? And you keep following her around, doing whatever she tells you to. You sound pathetic.”

  His eyes snap to mine. So he was listening. I catch my breath when I realize all the hurtful things I’ve just said. His face begins to cloud, from clear indifference to a perfect mix of anger and disappointment. His brow sinks, and lines form around his eyes. Still, he says nothing. I open my mouth to apologize but only a muffled sound comes out, because I don’t know what to say. I know what I should do, though. To save him, my mother, the kingdom, I have to leave. I have to run away and never be found.

  I turn and run. Trey calls to me to stop, but I keep going. I expect Trey to catch up to me, to grab me, but I am ahead of him, out of his reach. How is it I am so nimble, so graceful? I’m running so fast that everything is a blur around me. The farther I race, the more I know that this is the right thing to do. To be alone, not responsible for anyone else. All at once I feel brave and invincible and athletic, things that I never felt before. The feeling is strangely exhilarating.

  I come to a stop when I see something moving among the trees. Slowly, it drags itself along, scraping up the forest floor. Letting the air fill my lungs, I turn. Trey is gone. At first I think it’s an awkward, large animal, like a moose, but it stills at the same time I do. I get the feeling it’s watching me. Now, through the leaves, I can make out crisp pink cloth. I duck my head lower and see the shoes. Girls’ white T-buckle shoes, the surface more scuffs than patent leather. One delicate knee-high is up, and one is pooling around her ankle. I strain to remember her name. “Vi?” My voice is a loud whisper.

  I know she can’t answer me. Every time she opens her mouth, that foul black mud will pour over her chin. She doesn’t come toward me, though. She stays there, perfectly still. The forest is so quiet that I can hear her breathing.

  “I know it’s you,” I call pleasantly, because she’s a child, and a jumpy one, and I half expect her to run away. I think I’ve lost her when she takes one step in the direction she’d been headed, toward the Outfitters, but suddenly she stops. “Stop hiding,” I say. “Come on out.”

  She doesn’t move. I wait a minute, but nothing changes. Either the leaves are shuddering in the breeze, or she is.

  I step forward, hands out. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  When I’ve moved closer, I can see her eyes, wide and brown as the mud crusting her lips. There’s always fear there, but now it’s magnified. She’s shaking. I peer through the branches and see something lying on the ground beside her. A familiar powder blue. And blood, now crusted and dark, almost the color of the mud around it. And blond hair, now greasy and tangled and matted with pine needles and leaves. My body.

  I gasp. “Vi. What are you doing with that?” But it’s obvious what she is doing. She’s moving it toward the Outfitters, not away from it, not where it can be buried in these vast woods and safely disappear forever. She’s bringing it to where the heart of the search party will be, where it will likely be buzzing with people.

  She wants them to find my body.

  Maybe she always wanted me dead, too, because one thing is clear. She wants me to stay that way.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “What are you doing?” I shout at her, but she doesn’t listen. She grabs handfuls of greasy green hair and begins to drag my lifeless body through the mud. She’s so tiny, but when I reach for her, her elbow jabs between my ribs. It doesn’t hurt, but the little girl’s force shocks me. Her eyes narrow to slits. She opens her mouth only a sliver, and black filth drizzles out. I know that if she could, she’d be hissing at me to get away. I put my hand on hers, trying to pry her fingers up, but the hair is wound tightly through them. All I can manage to do is pull up a few strawlike strands that break apart in my hands. I grab the hair closer to the scalp and yank in the other direction. A whole lock of hair at the crown of the head rips free in a series of sickening pops, like a seam splitting, leaving a pinkish-gray bald spot there. That’s me, I think, wincing at the bloody clump of hair in my hands, and am so shocked for the moment that I’m not prepared for what comes next. She lunges at me, throwing me on my back and knocking all the air out of my lungs. When I recover from the shock, she’s straddling my waist and holding a finger up to her muddy lips. Quiet.

  I struggle to move, but it’s useless. I’m pinned to the ground. This little girl, not four feet tall, has pinned me to the ground. She looks over her shoulder and before I can form another plan of escape, I hear the swish of feet along the grass. Someone is coming. I strain to see over the little girl’s shoulder, but can only make out a faint glow. Jack. I swallow when I hear his voice. “I’m going to wring that little brat’s neck.” He stops, points his head to the sky, and shouts, so loud it nearly shakes the trees, “Do you hear that? I’m going to wring your neck!” And then he continues on. Once he’s moved on, I exhale. She moves off of me and bends over the body again.

  “Wait,” I say, finally understanding. “You want my body to be found so that my mother can’t bring me back to life. You don’t want Jack to become ruler, either, do you?”

  She wrinkles her nose and shakes her head.

  I lean over and press my eyes into my knees. “All right. I’m totally confused.”

  There’s another sound, nothing more than the crack of a branch in the distance, but Vi startles like a doe, stilling, her eyes filling once more with fear. She looks around and grabs a branch, then begins to scrawl something in the soft dirt. I watch each letter as it’s produced, eager to find some answer to the mystery, but what she writes makes no sense, even when it’s right in front of me, etched in mud.

  Not Jack.

  “What?” I shrug. “Then who?”

  She stands and moves close to me, and for a moment I’m afraid, and the next moment I’m embarrassed for feeling that way in front of an eight-year-old. But I can still feel her inexplicably enormous weight on my waist pushing my back into the ground. When she grabs my hand, not at all gently, I don’t know what to expect. Suddenly the world dims and I’m floating through a blur. When the world comes into focus, after a moment, things look strangely muted again, like they did when I was alive. My body is gone. Vi is gone, although, oddly, I can feel the intense pressure of her hand on mine. I swivel my head around and at once it’s obvious I’m not in the same place I’d been in a second ago. The pines are gone, and now I’m surrounded mostly by leafy trees. The ground is no longer covered in pine needles; instead, I’m up to my ankles in muddy water. There is a smell in the air, like burning coal from a grill. Each way I turn, I see nothing but trees.

  Before I can panic, a voice greets my ears. Out of nowhere. I see the girl, Vi, coming down the path, skipping. This time, she’s different. Her pink dress is clean and unwrinkled, her shoes are unscuffed. She is singing a nursery rhyme about a man who lived in the moon, and I know right away that I have slipped into one of my visions. But what a vision! Unlike before, it is so real, I feel I can almost reach out and touch her. She even smiles at me, like she can see me there. But suddenly there is another voice. Angry. “You took them from me!”

  Another person comes into view. Lannie, wearing the familiar white dress, but what is unfamiliar is the way her lip curls in hate as she storms after Vi. Vi turns, her eyes wide with fear. “I’ll give them to you,” she says in a voice I don’t recognize. I realize I don’t recognize it because I’ve never heard it, but it’s sweet, soft, and so full of fear I want to grab her and hug her to me. Protect her. She bends over and begins to roll her sock down as Lannie says, “They’re silk stockings, you know. For women. They’re not kneesocks, like babies like you wear.”

  I stare at Lannie. I remember how she taunted me before, when we played, but it was always good-natured. It was always just fun, wasn’t it? She’d never done anything horrible to me. Not at all. Then I turn in time to see Vi lift her foot out of her white shoe. She loses her balance and her foot touches the dirty forest floor.

  “Look what you’re
doing! You’re getting them all muddy! And I just bought them!”

  After some more struggling, Vi manages to take both stockings off. She slips her bare feet into her knee-highs and shoes and holds the white stockings out to her sister. Lannie takes a step forward, and for a glimmer of a second before she reaches out, I see the fear in Vi’s face morph into defiance. Vi throws the stockings to the ground and grinds them into the mud with the sole of her shoe. She smiles triumphantly, but it only lasts for a single instant before Lannie begins shrieking loudly enough to pierce eardrums. She lunges at Vi, screaming, “You brat! You’re always in my things!” and it doesn’t help when she reaches for the stockings and slips in the mud. Vi makes the mistake of laughing. I know it is a mistake and yet there is nothing I can do to stop it. I know the outcome.

  They struggle in the mud. The little girl is small and bony, not strong and nearly fully grown like Lannie. It’s not long before Lannie has handfuls of her little sister’s long brown hair. They both fall to the ground in a heap of mud and grunts and once-crisp Sunday clothing. Vi presses her muddy palm against her sister’s face, flattening her nose, trying to push her away, but it’s no use. Lannie grabs her by the back of the neck and pushes her down against the forest floor. Harder, harder …

  Then she straightens and, blinking away mud, her sister’s handprint still upon her face, picks up the stockings. The forest is grave-quiet as she stands, and at first I want to run when she turns to me, but it’s the same as with Justin and Angela: she doesn’t see me. She walks through me, swiping a stray lock of hair behind her ear. I stare at the motionless body whose face I cannot see—so tiny, so vulnerable—tears welling in my eyes. But before they can spill over, something moves behind the trees. I wipe my eyes and strain to see a figure in the dark canopy of leaves, but I already know very well who it is. Trey.