The Hollow Girl

by Hillary Monahan

  Unclean. I was unclean. How could one ever be clean again after such a thing?

  “It was not fruitful,” Gran said, watching me scrub. “I would have seen it. There is no child.”

  I had to tell Gran what happened, but the words eluded me. I gestured at the pole, and she hobbled over to Martyn, reaching her hand up into his trouser leg to grab his ankle. She tilted her head back, closing her eyes. “There is no time, Bethan. He is too close to gone.”

  I twitched. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to tell me I could still feel something through the dullness. I tried talking again, and failed, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. It took a whole precious minute of Martyn’s dwindling time for me to manage a gurgled, “Save him.”

  “I know no medicine that can make the insides stop bleeding. The best we can do is—”

  “SAVE HIM!” My voice echoed through the fields, shattering the stillness of the clear, cold night. Gran peered at me, her lips pinched with displeasure, but she did not chide me for my rudeness, instead tilting her head back to regard Martyn’s pulpy face.

  “There is a way, but you have to understand what you commit yourself to. Magic has a cost. A high cost. I told you this before. You will have to do things you never—”

  “I’ll give anything,” I said.

  “ ‘Anything,’ she says. No, this is not your price to pay. You will reap what is sown, but our hands will be ever stained red.” Gran jabbed a finger into the chieftain’s chest, startling him. “That boy of yours is a poison, and poison must be purged. Bethan wants to save this young man—it will be your son who pays the price to fuel her magic.”

  The chieftain looked ill. He staggered away from us, his hands raised in supplication, his head shaking back and forth, making his woolen cap tumble to the ground. “No. He’s a boy. Just a boy. He can learn. He can—” His voice broke on a scream. Gran had lifted her hand in his direction and was swiveling her fingers like she twisted a door handle, though she grasped only air. The veins bulged in the chieftain’s throat and his eyes went bloodshot.

  “Drina, no. I beg you,” he pleaded.

  His face ripped open along the scar traversing his cheek, the age-old hurt flayed wide as if she’d dug her fingers into his flesh and peeled back the skin. Blood welled in the wound, and he slapped his palm over it to stifle the flow. Gran advanced on him, pointing a taloned finger perilously close to his eye.

  “Do not forget who you pledged yourself to, Wen Roberts. Who owns you. I brought you here to behold your son’s evil deeds. Is your own ruin so easily forgotten? Do you think I would allow history to repeat? I told you to warn him off. I told you to correct him. You failed. As his chieftain and his father, you failed, and my Bethan and her diddicoy suffered for it.”

  Days ago, when I’d eavesdropped on their private conversation, it’d been clear that my grandmother and the chieftain shared a past. What awfulness had occurred that Gran could claim to “own” the chieftain and he’d not refute it?

  “I know, Drina. I know.” The chieftain’s head hung low, his shoulders slumped. “I cannot help but love my son.”

  “That is your burden, not ours. Fate punishes us for our transgressions eventually. Perhaps your hens are home to roost at last.” Gran dropped her hand from his face and turned to Martyn, her fingers manacling his ankle. She scowled. “Death takes us feet first, and he is slipping. Can you climb to him, Bethan? To his mouth? I know you are in pain.”

  “I’m fine.” I wasn’t, but I approached the pole regardless, putting my hands on the big rusty nails embedded where Thomson’s feet used to be. I pressed my weight down to see if they’d shake loose, but they were sturdy in the wood. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Take his last breath. Suck it down and hold it inside of you. Death will not stake its claim while you have it.”

  She’d said she didn’t allow cats near her because they’d steal an old woman’s last breath, and yet it seemed I was to be the cat to Martyn. I had so many questions, but there was no time for any of them. I had to trust and I had to climb.

  As I scaled the pole, I winced in pain, the aches and injuries no longer out of mind. But it did not stop me, and soon I was nose to nose with Martyn. I looked at the cuts and bruises on his chin and cheeks, at the swelling in his eye and the knot forming on his temple, and I felt another twinge. The wall that separated me from She Who Inhabited My Skin was shifting. But I didn’t want to feel. Feeling hurt.

  I shut my eyes, swallowing my emotion. Stone was safe.

  I looped my arm behind Martyn’s body, my gorge rising when I made contact. Closeness with anyone—even Martyn—was nauseating. And yet I had to endure for his sake. I tipped his chin up and forced his head back. We looked like lovers, but there was nothing romantic about our first kiss. I cupped his bloody cheek. I smeared my lips to his. With a hard jerk on his jaw, I opened his mouth and breathed him in, his cold death settling into the pit of my belly.

  Breaths, as a rule, are warm, airy things, but Martyn’s death rattle was frigid and thick, like icy porridge slithering down my throat. It tasted like raw meat and pennies.

  “You can feel it?” Gran asked, her hand sliding from Martyn’s leg. “It is a distinct sensation. Like—”

  “I’m frozen on the inside.”

  In more ways than one. I cannot feel.

  “Yes, precisely. Now climb down. We need to store the breath before its magic fades.”

  Question after question popped into my mind as I eased my way down. What will happen if the magic doesn’t work? Did we deny Martyn a true death? Will he linger between the living world and the spirit world, never finding peace without that last breath? I trusted Gran, but it was easy to fall prey to worry. Martyn being lost forever could very well shatter whatever fragile strength I still claimed.

  The chieftain unhitched Martyn from his perch, his hand pressed to Martyn’s stomach to hold him steady while he worked the hooks from his legs. Free, Martyn slumped forward, his big body too heavy for the chieftain to catch. He landed face first in a heap on the ground, appearing dull and boneless, more like a pile of meat than human. The chieftain murmured an apology—to Martyn, to me, to Gran, perhaps to all—before looping his arm under Martyn’s shoulders and dragging him.

  The walk to the caravan took a while. Gran’s gait was labored thanks to her overtaxed joints, and the chieftain struggled to haul Martyn. Halfway there, Gran reached for me, her fingers gently brushing the back of my wrist. I pulled away, concentrating on the tingling sensation in my toes instead of my trauma.

  “I could not see you. I saw fields of wheat before they took your charm, but that is all. It happened so fast, there was no time for magic to save you beyond the wind. I hope you can forgive my poor preparation.”

  “It’s not your fault.” I’d never blamed her and I never would. She’d foretold a terrible thing and she’d told me why it was better I suffer it than not. She’d made me a charm; she’d sent the wind to dissuade the boys. She’d come to collect me herself. She’d done all she could.

  Gran was not to blame that I’d endured Hell.

  Silas was to blame. He and his horrible friends.

  After a few more steps, I glanced at Martyn, and my thoughts skipped to the Woodards. Mr. Woodard would be unrelenting in the search for his missing son, especially after the fights with Silas. If he reported it to the constable, there would be trouble. People might do to us what Silas had done to one of them.

  “Mr. Woodard saw Silas provoking Martyn,” I said. “He’ll make assumptions if Martyn doesn’t come home.”

  The chieftain grimaced. “I’ve considered this. It would not be the first time one of our girls ran off. If the drabarni allows it, I will visit the Woodard patriarch and tell him I believe you two escaped together after the fight. You’ll have to avoid town, Bethan, but that should not be difficult. It will give you a few days to do what you must.”

  “And what about the field? It’s a mess.”
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br />   He thought for a moment. “I’ll send the men to wash it away before dawn. There will be no trace. The crops are damaged—the scarecrow, too—but a gadjo will not assume magic, just bad weather.”

  “You have excused Silas’s wickedness in the past,” Gran observed. The chieftain did not deny it.

  On we walked. When we were close enough to camp that I could smell the spice of dinner on the air, Gran stumbled into my side. I flinched. Any touch was still too raw to bear, but I bit past my instinct to jerk away and offered her an arm.

  “I ought to be holding you up after what happened,” she said, despair and regret in her voice. That is true, I thought.

  From the outskirts of camp, I could hear the lively music from the fire; my people were blissfully unaware of the tragedy that had played out a field’s length away. My thoughts strayed: Would Silas be among them? Would the other boys? Were they celebrating what they had done? Or did they hide like rats in the bowels of a ship?

  I do not wish to know.

  The chieftain struggled with Martyn’s weight, but he followed Gran and me all the way back to our vardo. Gran lit the candles on the table and by her bed before collapsing into her chair. The chieftain stood in the doorway with Martyn in his arms, looking uncertain. All I wanted was for him to leave and the night to end.

  I pulled my mattress from the corner and laid it out. “Put him there,” I said. I’d sleep on the bare floor—the soreness of hard wood on my back didn’t matter. The chieftain eased Martyn onto my bed, taking a moment to adjust his limbs so he looked less like he was dead and more like he was sleeping.

  It was a lackluster illusion. I wanted my mental picture of Martyn Woodard to be a sunny, smiling flirt smoking a cigarillo, not the pulpy, battered mess on my bed. I covered Martyn’s body and face in a patchwork afghan, tucking it around him until it looked like a death shroud.

  “I should go. I need to get the men to the field, and talk to Silas. To see if he’ll apologize.”

  As if that could ever—would ever—be enough. I gave the chieftain a sharp look. It must have unnerved him, because he left without another word. I was glad for it.

  I wanted nothing more than to be done with this day, but there was much still to do. I grabbed the basin to scrub Silas’s taint from my body. I’d bathe in the river as soon as I could, but a cursory wash would have to do until the morning. I took the bowl, lye, and a rag outside, squatting in the grass and rubbing myself raw. Silas had bled me with his rough attentions, and when one basin of water turned pink, I emptied it out on the ground and poured another from the pitcher. No matter how much soap I used or how many cloths I took to my legs, I still felt dirty. By the time I was through, there was a fresh ache from my savage scrubbing.

  Frigid, I quickly changed into unsullied wools. They did little to warm me. Martyn’s breath was a lump of ice in my middle that made it impossible to get warm. Gran’s blue shawl had been left in the field, so I grabbed another from the peg on the wall and wrapped it around my shoulders.

  I wadded up my clothes and thrust them into a burlap sack. I could see bits of Thomson’s hay on the blouse, and Silas’s taint staining the inside of the skirt, and I swore then that those garments would never touch my skin again.

  I thought Gran would be asleep upon my return, but she was awake and still propped in the chair. She motioned me close and attended my wounds, dabbing at my scalp with a cloth and rubbing salve onto the cuts on my shoulder. When she finished, I sank into the chair across from her. She said nothing, and I watched as her fingers coursed over the tabletop in meditative circles. She did that sometimes when she was looking for unknown truths with her sight—it helped lull her to the still place where visions were born. In that moment, I hated it, and I hated that she could do it. I didn’t want to shoulder the burden of her psychic vagaries.

  “Stop it,” I said. “Please, stop.”

  “If you insist.” She turned her face to the window to peer at the blood moon hanging low in the sky. It painted her face with shadows, the hollows beneath her eyes and cheeks so pronounced, she looked skeletal.

  “We are losing time,” she said, turning back to me. “I know you are tired, and soon you will rest. For now, though, we must store the diddicoy’s death rattle. Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” I said, my voice flat.

  She reached for me across the table, her warm fingers tangling with my frigid ones. “ ‘Yes’ what?”

  I jerked away and huddled inside my shawl, my teeth chattering with cold. “Yes, Gran. I’m ready.”

  “We need the mirror,” she said.

  I took it from the wall and slid it before her, but she pushed it my way with a shake of her head. “The breath is inside of you, Bethan, not me. You must deliver it. Blow on the glass. Force it out and do not stop until all the cold is gone.”

  I braced my hands on the table and leaned down, my breath clouding the surface. I inhaled and then blew air out in a steady stream, but the sludge remained inert.

  “From your gut. Go deep,” Gran said. I clenched my abdominal muscles and strained, my eyes bulging, my cheeks ballooning. Martyn’s breath lurched from my stomach, lodging in my chest and rising with every heave until it polluted the back of my throat. It was sticky in texture, a rancid wad, and I ejected it onto the mirror in much the same way I’d seen the boys eject their sputum in the mornings. A breath shouldn’t look like riverbank mud, yet that’s what I spewed—runny sludge.

  I glanced Gran’s way, awaiting instruction, but she waved at the mirror and I turned back just as the muck absorbed into the surface, the glass whirling with strange, dark fog. A shadowy image of Martyn Woodard’s face took shape within, but unlike the corpse in my bed, mirror Martyn was whole. There was no blood. There were no bruises, cuts, or broken bones.

  I wanted to feel hopeful that we could save him, but feelings remained beyond my grasp. I eyed the mirror like I’d eye a stick on the ground—with detachment.

  Gran picked up the mirror and nodded, tapping on the image of Martyn’s mouth. “It is good. It is a strong picture. Three days.”

  “ ‘Three days’ what?”

  “That is how long his breath will last. After that, it will disappear and he is gone.”

  I waited for further instruction.

  “We have things to discuss. You have questions. Explanations and answers are forthcoming. But that can wait until morning. For now, you must rest and restore your strength.”

  I nodded, standing to help her into her bed.

  “You don’t have to sleep on the floor,” Gran said. “Take my bed. You are hurt.”

  “No. My body is young, even if it is injured.”

  And I cannot feel. A hard floor is nothing to me.

  Gran fussed about it, but I helped settle her into her bed before creating a nest next to the table with the extra blankets.

  “At least take my fur,” Gran said, pulling it from her legs.

  “No. You need it.”

  She frowned. “Are you certain?”

  I extinguished the lantern to end the conversation. Gran drifted off shortly thereafter, but I stayed awake long after, staring at the darkness, my knees gathered to my chest. The floor was hard and cold no matter how many blankets I piled beneath me, and my mind kept replaying what had happened in the field. I would thrust the thoughts away and try to focus on the work ahead of me instead, but my thoughts always returned to the hands on my hips.

  The hands on my hips.

  The. Hands. On. My. Hips.

  My sleep was restless and full of nightmares—the tangled yarns hanging from the ceiling did nothing to save me that night. I woke before Gran and the sun, my eyes fixed on the wall until the first slivers of daylight penetrated the slats of the vardo. I rose and hurried to the river, dreading the cold water but needing it, too.

  I waded out to my waist, the current washing away some soil, but not all my filth went bone deep. I worried someone would discover me exposed, so I finished quickly, unabl
e to ignore the bruises riddling my body. My wrists were raw and red from the bindings. Yellow and purple marks marred my upper arms. My fingers and toes were black-and-blue from where Tomašis had stomped on them, and my shoulder ached every time I moved.

  My face was sore, too, from Silas’s punch, and when I got back to the vardo, I went to where the mirror normally hung, but the space was empty. We’d moved it into the bureau drawer, and I pulled it from its silk nest to peer at it. I was met not with my own reflection but Martyn’s sleeping face. Somehow, in the delirium of insufficient sleep, I’d forgotten about that.

  I studied it awhile, frowning when I realized it had faded since the last time I looked at it—the edges were shadowy and the image shimmered, as if I were looking at a pond stirred by the wind instead of a solid glass surface.

  I must’ve lost time while gazing at the mirror, because Gran’s voice startled me. “Good morning. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine.” I wasn’t fine, though. I was anything but. I was a hollow shell, but I would go through the motions of being Bethan so I wouldn’t have to face the myriad of awful feelings swirling beneath the surface.

  “We must go to the fire to tell our people what wickedness has occurred,” she said.

  I inhaled sharply. I hadn’t thought about having to face the clan. Or worse, my attackers—what would I do seeing them? How would I feel? Would I crumble? “I won’t speak of it. It’s forbidden,” I whispered. Any woman would have struggled after an attack such as mine, but for Roma, it was more complex. Purity was valued. Private matters were kept private. Women did not speak of carnality for fear of being labeled mochadi. “I am a woman with no husband. They may shame me—think me impure.”

  “The rules are complicated when it comes to personal matters, but I promise you, the shame belongs to Silas and his boys. Not you. Never you. You are righteous. We could cast the five of them out for their crimes. We could disavow them from our people forever if you prefer, but someone needs to bleed to save your young man. If you wish to do the magic, we must lay down our terms.”