Beware the Wild (2 page)

“Well, I see something. What do you call the lights that are always leading people into the swamp? The ones from the Clary stories.” If anyone knows the finer details of the Clary Tales, it's Candy.

She steps off the fence. Sweat has pulled her straight, blonde hair flat against her forehead and the bridge of her nose is beginning to flush pink. We've been outside too long, but there wasn't an ounce of me that wanted to sit and listen to anything the sheriff had to say.

“You mean the creeping lights people claim to see when they're drunk? That strand men and children deep in the swamp? The Wasting Shine. Or just Shine,” she says confidently. “And they're easy to explain away with our good friend Science.”

“That's it. That's what I see right now. Long, creeping lights like vines. Not at all like Science.” I'm not usually quick to dismiss science, but this is different. The Shine beckons and blinks, beckons and blinks, turning the whole of the swamp into a living thing. I know I shouldn't say more, but worry makes me reckless. I ask, “What if there really is something different—dangerous—about our swamp?”

“That's called superstition. Or crazy. And that's no one's friend.”

The screen door squeals. Mama pushes her head through enough to be visible. Her dark curls are as limp as her voice when she calls, “Time to wash up, Sterling. Dinner in ten.” And then she's gone. I don't think she even saw us standing here.

“That's my cue.” Candy squeezes my hand, pulling me halfway to the house. “Want me to see if I can weasel out of the Pickens' weekly drama and stay for dinner?”

Selfishly, I do, but it'll be miserable inside our house with or without her. I shake my head. “Thanks, though.”

She nudges the heavy silver bracelet on my wrist and smiles. It's as much encouragement as she can muster. She retrieves her bike and pedals down the drive, leaving me alone in the middle of the yard.

I twist the bracelet, letting the silver push into my bones. Phin gave it to me early this morning before everything went wrong. This morning. He hasn't even been gone a full day. It feels impossible. He'd been proud as a robin when I opened the box.

“I found it up in the attic with Grandpa's old things,” he said, grinning.

There's a reason Mama tucked it away when Grandpa died. It's horrid. A thick band of tarnished silver with a small gap where a wrist could squeeze through, embellished
with a gaudy bloom of curling flowers. I frowned at Phin's grin. “You don't say.”

“Sass,” he said with amusement.

No one can dismiss my frowns like Phineas, and I felt the beginnings of a wretched smile respond to his teasing.

I picture his dark hair, charting an improbably choppy course around his head. It took more than one hair product to change his curls into the mess he preferred. The long line of his nose, the sharp angles of his jaw, the three freckles that trip down the left side of his neck—I know my brother better than anybody.

“Let him go,” I whisper, looking into the swamp.

I feel the flood of sunset against my back, but my eyes stick on the dark place where Phin vanished. I should have gone after him; I shouldn't have let him carry that rage away. But there was a look in his eyes I recognized and it nailed my feet to the ground.

Darold told Mama that Phin only needed to blow off some steam. He'd be home before we knew it. Neither of them had been willing to voice the grim thought plaguing us all: the swamp always demands a price of trespassers.

And he hadn't come home. Not in an hour and not in eight.

Now, finally my eyes burn and panic balloons in my throat. Of all the stories we keep in Sticks about the dangers of the swamp, there's not one in which someone who went inside it returns unchanged. If they escape at all, it's with half a brain or madness in tow. Of course, those are just stories: tales kids tell to scare one another, but they wouldn't be so frightening if our parents weren't so guarded.

I'm certain that right now, something awful is happening to my brother and there's not a single thing I can do to help him.

Long after Candy has gone, I keep staring into the tangle. The Shine grows brighter as the light of day fades. Then, somewhere deep inside, I see movement.

I squint, clench my fists, and wait.

I want it to be Phin so very badly.

Surfacing through the dusk in flashes of white and green, a figure coalesces. I try not to breathe, not to move or do anything that might draw attention and make the swamp stop this person from emerging.

Its steps are slow. Mockingbirds shout their litany of songs at the setting sun. I smell something soft and sweet on the air.

It gets closer.

I see long hair and a dark green sundress, and I feel an icy pain in my chest. A girl. A girl, not my brother, is walking out of the swamp.

“Hello?” I call, disappointment heavy in my throat.

She pauses briefly, but doesn't answer before continuing her slow progress toward me.

“Hey!” A dozen swamp stories flash through my mind.
Is this even a girl?
Unnerved, I step closer to the house, putting distance between us. “Can you speak? I said hello.”

But again, she doesn't answer. Her hand extends slowly and she hesitates before finding the fence. Dark hair hangs in her face, wild with curls and lovely in a way mine will never be. She climbs with something less than grace, fumbles with her dress, and nearly falls to the ground in my yard. She catches herself in a crouch, halfway to her knees. This clumsiness does nothing to relieve me.

All at once, the shining vines reach toward the girl, grasping for her as if they never meant to let her go. But she's beyond their reach. She rocks. Finding her balance, she tests the ground with her hands and feet before pushing up again.

Then, her eyes lock on to mine, and she heads straight for me.

I can't think of a single good reason for a strange girl to stumble out of a swamp. But to stumble out of
this
swamp?

My mouth opens to shout or scream or make demands when Mama's voice comes from behind. “Girls, what are you waiting for? Come wash up for dinner!”

When I turn, she's standing with the screen door pushed open wide, a steaming spoon in her hand, and no hint of weariness about her. She watches me expectantly before shifting her gaze to the strange girl.

“What are you waiting for?” she asks again. Her irritation is split evenly between me and the girl I've never seen before in my life.

“What?” I ask.

“Sterling.” Mama points her spoon in warning. “Don't start tonight. You and your sister, pull that cotton from your ears, for Pete's sake, and come in for dinner.”

“My
what
?” I ask, but she's already gone. The screen door slaps three times behind her.

There's a hollow feeling in my gut as I turn to the strange girl. Her hands are folded demurely, her face is pale and radiant in the light escaping the kitchen windows. She wears a simple and quiet smile. Behind her, the swamp is flat black against the dusted blue sky. In comparison, she's all watercolor and light. She doesn't look real and I think it's because she's not, but she steps forward and still smiling says my name, “Sterling,” and then, “let's not keep Mama waiting.”

And without another word, she walks past me, up the three brick steps to the screen door, and straight into my house.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

M
AMA'S CHEEKS ARE ROSY WARM
and they carry a smile I haven't seen all day. She spins between the counter and oven with dishes gripped between hot pads. Darold makes a quick dive into the fridge for a beer, humming an unidentifiable tune. The bruise Phin left him, the one Sheriff Felder called a “fine piece of work” a few hours ago, is glossy and purple. Grinning at me, he takes a quick swig, then breezes down the hallway to pound his way upstairs. From the dining room, I hear the clatter of silverware as someone—the girl—sets the table.

None of this is as it should be. The rooms should be cold and dark and anxious. Mama should be stuck to her front room rocker, red-rimmed eyes watching for Phin to come walking down the road. Darold should be restless and irritable, glowering through his bloodied eye. All I should hear is the
tick-tick-tick
of the clock in the den, marking each second Phin is gone.

My house is too full and too strange.

“Mama, what's going on?” I push my hip against the kitchen table to stop the dizzy feeling climbing my limbs.

“Dinner is going on with or without you, so go wash up.” Mama knocks the oven shut with her knee. It complains the whole way up and she wrinkles her nose. “Darold! I need you to oil this door sometime this year!”

She pushes two serving spoons into a steaming casserole and carries it into the dining room. For a moment, I'm stuck. Staring down at the faux marble tiles, I take three deep breaths while Mama and the strange girl fuss over dinner in the other room. Whatever Mama said outside, I must have misheard her. There's no way she said “sister.”

“Sterling!” Mama stops in the doorway. Behind her, the strange girl stops, too, that same, small smile on her pink lips. “Why are you still standing there?”

I push off from the table and point at the girl. “Mama, who
is
that?”

Mama and the strange girl frown together, but it's Mama who speaks. “Are you feeling okay? What have you eaten today?”

Anger muscles through my confusion.
How can she be thinking about food?
She starts forward again and I circle away, pressing my back against the fridge. Strange Girl blocks the door, looking at me like she knows me well enough to care.

“I feel fine! I want to know who she is, why she's here, and why you're all acting like you know her. I watched her climb over the swamp fence, for crying out loud!”

“Now you're worrying me,” Mama says. “Are you telling me you don't recognize your own sister?”

“Sister?” The breath I take is shallow and worthless. How can she not see this girl wasn't here five minutes ago? “What about Phin?”

Mama opens her mouth and I wait for the sorrow to surface and pull the color from her cheeks, for the dread of impending loss to cloud her blue eyes. She presses her lips together. For a second, her eyes move out of focus and I think she's remembering, but then she says, “Honey, who's Phin?”

There's a storm in my ears when I look away.

Behind me, the fridge slips on the floor as I press my back into it as hard as I can. “My brother,” I say and then again, “Phineas Harlan Saucier is my brother and he ran into the swamp early this morning,” but Mama is unblinking.

Frantic, I search the front of the freezer for the photo I stuck there two years ago. I'd taken it on his sixteenth birthday just after the tow truck unhitched the '68 Chevelle in our driveway. The car was equal parts rust and disaster, but in the photo, Phin is a smear of happiness on glossy paper. It's my favorite picture of him.

What I find instead is an image of the strange girl standing in front of the same car. Her eyes are closed, but she's smiling with the keys cupped in one hand. I feel my fury rise like the sun.

When I look for her, she still stands in the doorway. “What have you done?”

The clock dings seven times in the den. Darold comes tromping down the stairs and the strange girl in the room licks her lips. She unfolds her hands in front of her, offering me nothing.

“Sass, what are you talking about?” Her voice is a silky thing as she steps forward.

“Don't,” I say, throwing a hand between us. “Don't call me that. Only Phin calls me that, and oh my God. Are y'all serious? All of you? No one remembers Phineas?”

No one gives me anything but a frown.

Every horrible story I've ever heard about the swamp flashes through my mind: the one of the two sisters who followed their dog deep inside only to be pulled beneath the mud by ghostly hands; the one of the woman who tricks you over the fence then eats your feet so you can't get home; the one of the trees that shriek so loudly your ears bleed, leaving you deaf to the cries of your loved ones; the one of the beast that steals your soul forcing your empty body to wander the swamp for eternity.

Now there's this story: the one of the dark-haired girl who crossed the fence and stole a boy's life. I haven't heard it before, but I'd recognize a swamp story anywhere.

“She came from the swamp! I don't know
what
she is, but she's
not
my sister!”

“I'm calling Dr. Payola.” Mom digs in her purse for her phone.

“What's all this shouting?” Darold's face appears around the corner, creased with concern. Mama only shakes her head and keeps digging.

I want to run, but my legs don't feel attached to my body. I'm trapped in place, in this kitchen that's my own and yet not mine at all, while the girl, the
thief
, closes the distance between us. Her fingers are soft and warm against my skin. She wraps them firmly around my arm with a small shake as if to say,
Don't fight me
.