Beware the Wild (19 page)

“So you stayed and turned into what? Ghosts? Demons?” I ask.

“No, there was more to it than that. From Elijah, Fisher also knew how to redirect Shine into things—tangible items: a bracelet, a gris-gris, a piece of food. Or our bodies.” She becomes very still for a second. “He was sure it would keep us safe. That by merging our lives—our bodies and souls—with Shine, we'd be safe from the evils of the world. And I trusted him. We went to the pond, built a fire of oleander and sumac, and breathed the smoke until we were well and truly poisoned.”

“Jezuz,” Heath mutters. “You killed yourselves.”

“Yes and no. As we lay dying, we swallowed cherry blossoms. We took their magic into our bodies and, in return, it threaded our veins with power. We became a part of the swamp and it was wonderful because there was nothing to fear. The swamp gave us everything we needed—food, shelter, warmth, protection.” She smiles a soft, sad smile.

“It was amazing. We could spend days learning how the water moved from pond to pond, or seeing which of us could find the smallest spiderweb. And the Shine! We could do so much. We were powerful, and I was happy for so many years.

“Eventually, though, I grew weary of that life. I asked Fisher if we could go, as we'd planned, but he refused. When I tried to leave anyway, he became furious. He told me I would die if I left—the cost of having such perfect protection from the swamp was that we were bound to it. Forever. I think he knew it before we ran into the swamp and didn't say.” She shudders at the memory. “So, I stayed with him because my only other choice was to die.”

“I'm sorry,” I say, swept up in her sadness.

“Jackass,” Heath adds. And then, “Sorry.”

“How did you meet my grandfather?”

A smile opens across her face. “Many years later, a young man stumbled into the grove of the cherry tree. He was a little drunk and a little lost and very overwhelmed by seeing Shine for the first time.” She laughs at the memory, a sweet sound. “When you're drunk, Shine is very bright and dizzying. But even so, he was sweet.”

Her smile is the truest kind. Though her cheeks flush with embarrassment and she presses a hand to one side of her face, she cannot contain it. Watching her remember something so good calls up a sudden fluttering in my lungs.

“I wanted to see him again, but people do not often see Shine without help, as you know. To make sure he would find me, I told him to drink alcohol moderately until he saw the glow of Shine. To ensure he'd remember me, I gave him something else.”

She shifts to sit cross-legged in her chair. In profile, she's a decade older with years of battle and hardship behind her. Her chin is raised, but her eyes are sad; she's a queen of wild things, and no stranger to sacrifice.

She says, “I'm glad it's still here. Your wrists are so slender, yet strong. The silver enhances that quality.”

I'm slow to realize what she's been telling me: that this bracelet was hers once upon a time, and that she gave it to the man she cared for so he could return to her. It sounds like a fairy tale or like one of the more romantic stories from the Clary collection.

“So what happened?” I press.

“He returned. Every night for a week. Oh, he always looked so dashing in his fedora. He never dressed appropriately for the swamp. He insisted that the only way to visit a lady was in dress pants and shoes. Somehow, there wouldn't be a bit of mud on those pants. I don't know how he did it! Determination, I suppose. And every single time, he brought me flowers. Honeysuckle and lilac blossoms.”

She pauses. Lost in some memory she doesn't share. Slowly, her smile fades. Her story has become dark even before she speaks another word.

“He said he'd found a way to free me. One of Ida's stories had given him what he thought was the secret of the swamp and all I needed to do was wait. So I waited, and while I did, I made a terrible mistake: I told Fisher I was leaving.” In spite of the warmth, she hugs her arms, rubbing her hands up and down, shoulder to elbow. And then her words tumble out.

“He was furious. He accused me of abandoning him, of not appreciating what we had, of being reckless and foolish to think Harlan would be any different from the man our father had intended for me. I'd never seen him so angry. He changed. I felt the Shine running toward him, channeling through him. I couldn't stop it. He shifted the course of all the Shine in the swamp so that it ran through him and he controlled it.

“I thought he would kill me, but what he did was worse. He changed me. Twisted my bones so I could hear them snap and shift. My skin hardened, my teeth became sharp, and my nails grew thick and black. It felt like it took days. And when the pain finally faded, Fisher was there, holding Harlan's pin-striped fedora.”

Tears shimmer in Lenora May's eyes. My own throat is tight and my toes squeeze together. I can guess at the rest of this story, but stopping her now seems like denying someone the final rhyme of a sonnet.

“‘Lenora May,' he said, ‘
never
do this again. It's my job to keep you safe and that's what I'll do, no matter the cost.'” Her words are frail, stilted, and defiant. “I thought Harlan was dead and my brother a murderer. That day, I promised myself that I would find a way to get out. For Harlan. For myself.”

“Sweet Pete, you could've been my grandmother.” It's a staggering thought, and I spend a minute trying to figure how old Lenora May is or if it even matters. Old enough to have been my grandmother, and probably old enough to have been my grandfather's grandmother. Yet, here she sits, looking as young as Phin.

Heath drops his head into his hands. Lenora May shrugs, and all I can do is laugh. It's a strange moment of camaraderie.

“Tell me what happened to Phin,” I say finally.

“I don't really know. That's the truth. I swear it. When Phineas came to the pond that
morning, he was distressed. He looked so much like your grandfather that I reached for him. I've wanted to be free of the swamp for such a long time, and sometimes the Shine listens. When Phin knelt at the pond, he wanted to get away as badly as I did, and the Shine answered: we swapped places.”

“So you're saying he's trapped exactly like you were?”

Lenora May nods in response. “Bound to the swamp with his life and stuck in the prison of a body Fisher created.”

Heath releases a long “Jeeeezuz,” but I don't let any of the encroaching despair take hold.

“But Grandpa Harlan thought he had a fix. What was it?”

I prepare myself for some impossible thing. He didn't free her, after all. If he had, we wouldn't be here right now, plotting how to save Phineas.

“Peaches,” she says with a vague smile. “He said that where things came from mattered, and if I could eat something that hadn't come from the swamp or anywhere near it, I'd be free.”

“Peaches?” That can't be the real answer. There's no way it's as simple as eating a peach. “There has to be more to it. Or maybe Grandpa was as cracked as everyone says.”

Lenora May is shaking her head. “He wasn't. Shine is powerful, but it's not
all
-powerful. It has natural balances in the world like everything else. You just have to know what they are.”

“Okay,” I say, struggling to find the good in this, “but it seems flimsy.”

“Like the cherry.” Heath perks up, excited by the connection. “Makes sense. If eating something from inside the swamp can pull you into it, then eating something from the outside should do the opposite. Actually, this makes the cherry thing
less
flimsy.”

It sounds as promising as anything else. If a cherry from that tree has the power to lure Lenora May inside the swamp against her will, then surely a peach from far away is as safe a bet as any. And I know the place to get it.

“It just so happens, Valerie Beale's family owns an orchard up north,” I announce. “I can call her for directions and we'll have peaches by tomorrow.”

Against my better judgment, I picture Phin's triumphant face as he leaps over the fence. Who knows? Maybe tomorrow we'll save him and Nathan and everything will go back to normal.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

L
EAVE IT TO A SMARTPHONE
to forget a crucial phone number at a crucial moment. Valerie's number is nowhere to be found and I wonder if I've ever had it.

“I'll drive,” Heath says, sensing my impatience.

We fly down the main drag of town. I give directions as we go. Valerie's family lives past the school where each lot is so heavily wooded it can barely be seen from the road. Not unlike mine. Heath speeds until I tell him to slow down. The Beale house is a modest two-story building with paint nearly as old as the town itself, and a collection of chairs from the sixties rusting in the front lawn. Five cars are parked to the side with their noses nudged into the woods. Most of them run, but never all at once. I spot Valerie's ancient Geo that's only safe for getting to and from school. Anything over thirty miles per hour and it'll shake you into a seizure.

Heath accompanies me to the front stoop. The door's had the same dingy wreath of fake flowers since I first visited in third grade. The flowers have been bleached to nothing by the sun, more fitted for a grave than a home with six people inside it. Above the door is a tarnished wrought-iron sign that reads,
ABIDE IN HIM
.

“Ominous,” says Heath as he raps on the door.

“I believe the term is
reverent
.” But he's right. The Beales are ambush religious. It's not that they are unusual for Sticks. Other than Candy, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who didn't believe in God at least a little. The Beales are just militant. They won't get in your face right away, but wait until you've said something scandalous or sacrilegious or scientific. I learned a long time ago to watch my mouth in this house. “Maybe go easy on ‘Jezuz' while we're here.”

“Noted,” Heath says, more to the sign than me.

The one sharp reprimand I'd received from the Beale parents had been over the topic of evolution, and that had been enough for me. Afterward, Abigail apologized for her parents in a whisper.

“Wait.” I suck in a breath. “Heath,” I say, reaching for his arm to stop him from knocking. The fog in my mind lifts a bit more, revealing a vast history I'd misplaced. “Heath, it wasn't Valerie.”

“What?” he asks, concern bending his voice.

“Abigail. They were—are—twins,” I say, tugging him away from the door. There's a reason I didn't have Valerie's number. We've never been close. Teammates on the volleyball court, sure, but friends? That was only ever Abigail. I know what this means. It's becoming sickeningly familiar. “Get in the car. Hurry.”

I can't believe it's happened again. To Abigail. And just when I thought I'd started to understand.

“What was she doing near the swamp?” I slam the door so hard Heath's iPod dives off the dash. “Why does this keep happening? And how do we stop it? Heath. We have to stop it or it'll keep happening.”

He steers us onto the main road with all the composure we have between us. It's only by his speed that I can tell he's agitated at all. I wish I could adopt some of his calm, but I think I missed the boat on that one. You have to be born with that sort of thing. And if Heath is as solid and dependable as his truck, then I'm a dirt bike, not much use for anything other than extreme terrain.

“Fisher said it was Lenora May. She was the one pulling people into the swamp, but how can she do that from here? She can't, right? She's not doing this.” I feel the world spinning away from me. The truth is right before me, making me feel all kinds of foolish. “It's him. It has to be Fisher, right? God! How can you be so calm?”

“I'm not.” He glances over. “I'm really not, Sterling. I'm freaking the shit out in here, but there's only one thing we can do about it.”

I thought it would make me feel better to know he was as upset as me.

I was wrong.

“Hurry,” I urge.

The only thing we can do right now is get our hands on some peaches and hope to high heaven they do the trick. I don't want to think about what happens if they don't. But no matter how hard I try not to, those thoughts sneak in, slippery as snakes. I picture a life without Phin, a life of never hearing him yell at me for something stupid I've done, of never visiting him at Tulane, of never telling him I was going to college to be every bit as brilliant as he always said I'd be. The town blurs through my tears until all I see are
flashes of color: brown and orange, green and gray, blue and red, blue and red, blue and red.

“Shit,” Heath hisses, pulling over to the side of the road. “It's your stepdad.”

I see him through the rear window, fixing his hat in place. He takes a second to jot Heath's license plate number in his little notebook, then inspects the meager contents of the truck bed. It's five full minutes before he saunters to the window with a twist in his eye.