by Sarah Jude
Rook’s voice was a rich heat that sank through my hair and coiled around me. I gasped, wiped my tears, but he’d seen me wrecked before. I twisted around to face him with my cheek against his mattress.
“Y-you scared me tonight,” I said.
He reached for his glasses and sat up to remove the rag from his forehead. “I’m okay.”
“If y-y-you died—”
Rook’s hands slid beneath my arms and eased me onto his bed, in his lap, shushing me with his forefinger. I grasped onto him and closed my eyes. He was real. The smell of plants from his greenhouse was trapped in the room; the vapor of chamomile and clove tea clung to his hair. His finger against my mouth, roughness and heat and softness all merging as one. I kissed his skin, the side of his finger, the tip. I turned over his hand and laid my lips on each of his knuckles because I wanted to never regret not kissing each part of him.
Once I finished with his hand, I swiveled around in his lap to straddle him, my fingers treading up his arm to his shoulder. I’d seen him naked before when we were little and swimming in Meyer’s Pond. Once I realized that I thought him handsome, sometimes I watched while he worked in his family’s field, shirtless and sweaty enough to warm my face. I ran the edges of my nails, down his abdomen to his waist, spreading my chills to him. His lanky muscles were defined, and yet I liked his softness.
“Shouldn’t you be home?” he asked.
“I had to come,” I said.
“Where’s everyone else?”
“Our fathers are roundin’ up men for a search, and my mama went with yours to pick up Raven from your aunt’s.” I drew my hand along his face, and he pressed the hard part of his jaw into my palm. “I kept worryin’, what if you were hurt, how bad it’d be. I just buried Heather. Please don’t make me bury you.”
His eyes focused on mine, so intensely green. Without any rain, they might well be the greenest thing in the Glen. “I was afraid you died in the water, Ivy. I was so damn mad at you for leaving me and scared and sick. When you were drowning and I pulled you outta that river, I had the feeling you didn’t wanna come out. Did you?”
“No,” I said. His lips parted in a stricken look. I rushed to finish, “I could’ve stayed under, but you didn’t let me. Every breath I have is because you put it in me. I’d be a fool not to know what a gift that is.”
I traced the smooth line of Rook’s collarbone and lowered my mouth to kiss him there. The catch of his breath, the tickle of his touch as he moved my hair behind my ear so he could see my face—my mouth, the shift of his legs and scratch of the hair on his legs rubbing against my thighs beneath my skirt. He unbuttoned the back of my dress and slid it down my shoulders until it pooled at my waist.
I suspected he knew why I was cold now, and he used his hands as best he could to warm me, used his mouth on mine and lower to find some heat. I reached down to ease off his drawers while his hand disappeared under my dress. His drawers hit the floor first, and my dress landed on top in a crumpled heap. Every movement with Rook was instinctual but also a lesson. If I liked it, I asked him to do it again, and he responded in kind. I kissed from his neck to his chest, the muscles of his stomach. Lower. I came up, his tongue teased mine, and I opened to his mouth, ran my hands up through his hair to grab hold as I kissed him back harder.
“You’re sure?” he asked. “If you need to wait—”
“I’m ready.” And I was. He glanced to his door, and I tilted my head, running my finger across his wrist. “Are you?”
“It’s just . . . You know, but yeah.” He opened a drawer on his nightstand to retrieve a condom, and tore open the foil packet. How Heather had giggled through the condom-over-the-banana demonstration in health class, but right then, with Rook, it didn’t seem so funny.
The darkness in the room thickened, bathing us in the amber of his oil lamp. Steadily, I moved on top of him while his hands guided my hips. My body ached—with grief, with sex, with secrets shared and unshared. From withholding myself from myself for too long.
Everything hurt. Sex with Rook, no matter how good it felt once the initial pain faded, didn’t remove loss. I didn’t seek to fill that hollowness. It was there. It was part of me now, and it would be for however long to come.
Yet giving this part of my body to Rook, him giving his to me, didn’t feel like empty desperation. This moment with him would’ve happened no matter the sadness and chaos. I’d thought about him for so long, thought about kissing him, touching him. Being kissed. Being touched. Wanting to know what it was like, and I liked it. I watched his head on the pillow as it shifted in hope of not hitting the headboard against the wall, of him liking the way I felt against him. His eyes met mine, and his smile eased when he realized I was staring at him. He shuddered and held me closer. Every day of my life, I’d known this boy. He’d been my friend. He was so much more. I hadn’t recognized the shift when it occurred, but I’d gained someone other than Heather with whom I could be so bare.
When it was over, both of us sweating and breathing hard, we took our time redressing, opening the window to let in the night air. Rook fixed the buttons on the back of my dress and placed his mouth on my neck before sweeping aside my hair. The sound of approaching voices outside hurried our last few kisses, and then I backed away toward his bedroom door, smiling.
“Your hair’s a mess. I like it.” He turned on his side and rolled his fingers in a gentle wave goodbye.
I was in the kitchen with now-cold tea when Briar and Mama reentered the house. Mama motioned for me to come with her, and I got up with a hushed “Good night” as I passed by Briar, who held Raven sound asleep on her shoulder. She opened the door, ready to lock it behind me, but she lingered, watching while I joined my mother beside the greenhouse.
“Stay safe on the road. He could be anywhere out there.”
The hounds’ howls kept me awake past midnight.
When I slept, it was fitful, dreams of mouths and gentle hands, horses’ hooves pounding the land, and throwing myself underwater, drowning until all went gray. My father came home long after the torches had burned themselves black.
No one found Birch Markle.
I rubbed my eyes. Remembering, wishing. Mourning a red curl.
I went to the kitchen, still in my nightdress, and cuddled inside Mamie’s blanket, where Wednesday wrapped her body around my ankles. I missed sitting on the back step and waiting for Heather to find me before school, before Rook joined us. I missed those mornings of giggles as she wiped the rim of fresh milk from above her lip, of timid smiles when Rook handed off the basket of eggs and my heart jumped because my fingertips had skimmed his.
One deep breath, a second, a scream built inside my belly. Tea. I needed some tea to halt the clatter in my mind.
My hands fumbled with a pitcher of water, spilling as I poured it into the kettle, which I set on the heat. A glass jar of herbs and flower buds was on the counter. A piece of twine held a card to the top, and Mamie’s handwriting read Sleep-Away-Sorrow Tea. Peppermint, valerian, hyssop, lavender, St. John’s wort, and others known only to me. I smirked. Of course, Mamie wouldn’t give away all her knowledge.
I rummaged through the drawer in search of a tea ball and noticed it sitting in the sink’s basin. I moved aside the vines of Rook’s strawberry plant. Sunrise had always been my favorite time of day. I awakened before my parents, and there was magic in the fog covering the field. Now I liked sunrise because it meant the night terrors left, at least for a while.
My gaze settled on the field across from my house. Some white cloth huddled in the middle of the dirt, a bed linen yanked off the line and carried by wind.
Bed linens didn’t have blond hair.
I rushed to the door, ready to pull it open and dash outside, but I halted. He could still be out there. Blade in hand. Stink of death surrounding him.
That body could still be alive.
I grabbed Papa’s rifle from the closet. It was loaded. Good. The door opened without sound, not even a
squeaky hinge, as I crept outside. Scattered pieces of clover and basil lay on the ground and withered. The garland of protection over my window was ripped apart as if it were weeds torn from the ground. I was staggering down the remaining stairs when I stepped on something round, cold, and smooth. A green glass circle marked March 27. It’d broken in half when I stepped on it.
Birch Markle had been here. At my house.
“M-M-Mama!” I shouted. “Papa!”
I needed to hear their frantic footfalls. I whipped my head, scanning the dirt road. It was empty. The morning quietude was undisturbed except for the scattered herbs and the body in the field, out of place and unreal. I picked up the halves of the glass circle. The glass was cool and damp with dew, but it didn’t warm against me and instead felt like a cold lump against my skin. A tear of grief and horror spun through my gut until I managed to scream again.
“Mama!”
Thumps and bangs from within the house. I tried crying out again, but my voice deteriorated into only a high-pitched whistle every time I breathed. Mama reached the doorway first and covered her mouth as she saw the broken garland and then the glass in my outstretched hand.
“I-it w-was Heather’s.” I choked on the words, tears running down my cheeks. “B-Birch was here!”
Papa came up behind Mama, still groggy with sleep, but he held her shoulders as she wept. “Dios mío.”
“What are you doin’ out here alone? Have you lost your mind?” he demanded.
“The field,” I said. “There’s a body.”
Papa paled and slipped on his boots. He nudged me to go back inside, yet I stayed locked in place. If I moved, I’d know for sure this wasn’t some nightmare.
Papa took the rifle from me and eased open the gate before approaching the fence separating the field from the road. A hoarse utterance caught my ear. “Oh, God.”
The heap of a white dress and bluing skin lying in the field seemed like an illusion in the fog. I broke out of my stupor and went through the gate. My feet were dirty. So were the feet of the girl in the field. Her hands, too. The rest of her so white like milk—until I came to her neck. Her face was turned from mine; there was a gaping hole where the front of her throat used to be. Had she been fed upon?
I crept along the body of the girl. Dried blood speckled her chin. Her lips were the same plum shade as the emerging sunrise, while her eyes were open, irises blue and pupils fixed.
Violet Crenshaw was dead.
Chapter Nineteen
We’ve always been afraid he’d be drawn back to take one of our girls. He’d take her into the woods and make her his bride. We even wondered if we should give him one, just to make him go away for good. But of course, we couldn’t. That’d be murder.
I did the coward’s thing and hid inside when the Crenshaws came with Sheriff, somber-faced and holding his hat to his heart. Dahlia knelt beside the sheet covering her sister’s body. She clasped Violet’s dirt-smudged fingers, her head lowered, back quaking with violent jerks. She didn’t sob loudly, only held Violet’s hand until her parents enfolded her, and the three of them made the long walk home.
Rook met me outside my bedroom window an hour later. He put his hands on my hips, his lips against my head. How I wanted to collapse against him. My middle ached from being with him the night before. I expected strangeness between us, but there was no tender moment to speak of what we’d done. Instead, I had a bucket of hot water and rags and scrubbed wood. The garland had left greenish stains around the window. It hadn’t mattered. The bad wasn’t thwarted.
“I g-gotta get rid of it,” I said.
“The sun’ll bleach it out,” he offered.
“Not good enough.”
I kicked over the bucket. The barren earth sucked the hot water into its cracks as quickly as it spilled, no mud forming. It was all dust and decay, rot.
Violet had been so pale, drained. I still smelled the metallic and musky-sweet tinge of death.
Rook folded his arms across his chest as I thrust open the door of the small work shed where my parents kept tools, some equipment from the clinic Papa swore he’d fix but never got around to. Through the clouds of dust and forgotten things, I dragged out a wooden plank and rifled around until I found a hammer and nails.
“What the hell are you doin’?” Rook asked.
“Boarding up my room,” I said. “I ain’t lettin’ Birch Markle even think he can get to me.”
I balanced the plank across the window, holding the nail in place, and swung the hammer as hard as I could. The nail drove halfway in. Again, I banged the hammer on the nail head, but this time, I hit so hard, the wood cracked. I made my way to the other side of the plank and reared back the hammer to drive in another nail, nearly whacking Rook behind me.
“Jesus, Ivy, you’re gonna kill yourself,” he griped. “Or me.”
He reached for the hammer, but I held it back from him.
“Let me do this.” I wheeled around, swinging the hammer against the wood and nails. “She didn’t deserve to die. She wanted to make things better, and he went and k-killed her anyway!”
“I know,” he said in a near whisper. “I wish I could make it better.”
“M-m-make it better?” My throat was ragged with crying and screams. “He killed her outside my house! Do you think that was a c-coincidence? Haven’t you heard what folks say, Rook? Birch is comin’ for me next!”
“I don’t believe them,” he said.
Crack! The hammer hit the wood. Rook flinched. I wrapped my fingers around the top edge of the plank and tugged. It didn’t take away the stains from the garland, but it would make a hell of an obstacle if someone one wanted in my window. I beat nails into another wood plank until the edges split.
I wasn’t going to die. Not by Birch Markle’s hands.
The hammer felt good in my palm. Weighted, heavy. I could pound that particular evil if he came up behind me. Returning to the work shed, I came back with some twine I belted at my waist, the long ends dangling by my thigh. I secured the hammer with the twine. A knife might slip. A gun could misfire. But this hammer, I liked it.
“We go now,” I said.
“Go where? Ivy, get a grip,” Rook argued.
“I’m g-going to the woods, and I’m gonna find Birch Markle. I’ll crack open h-h-his skull so I don’t have to see another Dahlia weepin’ over her dead sister or another Aunt Rue half mad with grief over Heather. I don’t want to die.”
My shoulder brushed past his arm, and he grabbed for me. “C’mon, Ivy. This is insanity talkin’.”
“I’m following the map Heather made. I’m going with you or without.”
Rook slapped the side of the house and shoved his hand through his hair.
Too much death, too much sorrow. I had to find where this madman hid in the woods, and I’d bring out Birch, dead or alive. Once I’d thought it better to make him face justice for what he’d done. I’d thought it wrong to get swept along in the mob mentality of killing him while the killing was good. A mob wasn’t personal.
What I wanted was.
Rook took a hunting knife, some water, and cheese, and gathered our horses. We rode to the fields. The carefree galloping of the past was gone. Veil swung his head from side to side, ears pert and twitching. Rook’s hand slid from the reins to rub his steed’s neck while he murmured a soft, “Easy.” Yet the horse stalled. I circled Whimsy around him to drive him on by the mare’s lead.
“He remembers last night,” Rook said.
“You never told me what you remember.”
I angled Whimsy close to Veil and stretched my leg to nudge the stallion’s rear flank. With a grunt, Veil lurched forward.
“We were patrolling.” Rook looked so tired, with dark shields under his eyes. The cut on his forehead scabbed. “This thing comes hulkin’ from the field.”
“What’d it look like?”
“Enormous. Tall. When it came closer, I realized it wore animal skins. The smell was awful. Like shit. I was
trying so hard not to get sick, and I fired at him.”
I’d heard those shots. I remembered Rook so frightened and lost when we rode to the river, when we first kissed. He wasn’t that boy anymore. He was worn down. Birch had thinned us both so that his fingers could poke right through our flesh.
Rook continued, “Veil spooked when Birch ran toward us, and after the second shot, he threw me off. I thought I’d hit Birch because he held his arm.”
“The hounds didn’t find any blood,” I said.
Something felt off about Rook’s story. He’d been hurt—there was no doubt. Still, a peculiar niggle pecked at the worry seeding in my mind.
“You think I’m lying?”
“No!” I answered too fast. “I know dogs’ sense of smell, though. They should’ve caught something.”
As we came up the field, we saw that two hillmen were stationed near Promise Bridge. They were saucer-eyed and held rifles, watching, intent on anything coming from the across the water. They’d never let us cross. We’d go south near where the animals were buried. The river wasn’t so wide there, and the water level was low. I kicked Whimsy’s sides and steered her southbound. Having Rook ride behind me pulled my skin tight, as if I wanted to tear out my seams and a bloody mess of me could run away wild.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“N-nothing,” I said.
“I know you. Something’s up.” He hurried his horse to walk alongside mine. “You can’t stop yourself from stammering when you’re upset.”
“You sure you hit him, that it was Birch?” I felt sick even asking.
“He was big. It was dark, and he came after me. Ain’t that enough?”
We were close to the bone land. If we went much nearer, we’d get the smell and the flies biting at the bare parts of our skin. I dismounted from Whimsy, unclipping her reins to leave her to graze. Leaving her wasn’t a choice I made lightly. Birch might come, and I prayed she would flee. But she could go no farther. Rook climbed off Veil and angled his body by mine. His hands cupped my face, then touched the acorn necklace double strung with Heather’s necklace of found things.