Green Angel (2 page)

to go into town. But I wasn't a fool. I took precautions. I wore my leather jacket, my clothes with thorns, my heavy boots into which I had hammered half a dozen nails. I carried my i stones and my slingshot. I was ready for looters, wild men, highway robbers. I expected almost anything, but when I left the woods for the mam thoroughfare, all that greeted me was an unnatural silence. There used to be traffic; there were trains that ran on the hour racing across the silver bridge into the city. Now the bridge had all but melted in the heat from the city. It was closed, a thick rope tied across the entrance. People stayed close to home, worried about what might await them on the open road. There used to be children headed to the river to swim on hot days; now there was no one. There used to be bicyclists, carts, farmers on their wav into town to the monthly market; now there was nothing but the dust I kicked into the air with every step I took. My sister's dog had followed me. He snarled at the few strays lurking about, pets left to fend for themselves when their owners failed to return home. On one corner there were two dead ravens, their feathers thick with ash. The plum trees that had lined the road were leafless, the bark gray. When I passed the church just outside the village, there was a sign printed with the names of everyone who'd been lost. One after another, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. I was amazed by how many there were. But I was not surprised to see my name among them. The girl I had been, the one called Green, they were right about her. She was gone. The shopkeeper at the general store stared hard when he saw me. He didn't know who I was, with my short hair and my black ink and the nails in my shoes. He reached for the club he kept near his money box, ready to fight me off if need be. Even after I told him I was my parents' daughter, he didn't seem to believe me. He spoke to me from a distance, keeping the counter between us, as if he were conversing with a ghost. Everyone said you were dead, he insisted. I didn't dispute this. I didn't say these people were wrong. I just took what I'd brought to trade out of my backpack and held it up to the light. The shopkeeper noticed my cloudy eyes; he could tell I was half-blind, and perhaps this was why he tried to cheat me. He told me the ring I had was copper. But I knew it was gold. My mother had kept this ring in a bowl on her dresser, and I had played with it ever since I was a baby. I knew what I held in my hands. Pure sunlight. Pure gold. I laughed at the idea that my mother's most valued piece of jewelry was copper. The sound of my voice frightened the shopkeeper and he stepped even farther away. He didn't know what to expect from me, but one thing was certain. I wasn't shy anymore. I wasn't that quiet, moody girl Green, whom anyone could fool. I was the girl who could touch the earth and gauge where to find the river. I was the one who could feel sorrow in the wind. I knew that gold was heavy, copper warm, and the silver candlesticks I brought forth from my backpack felt like ice. I suppose you're going to tell me these are a deer's antlers, I said of the candlesticks, which had been cast by J one of the finest silversmiths in the city. I know what I have, I told the shopkeeper. I expect to be paid well. That was the last of any arguments at the general store. As a matter of fact, the shopkeeper called for his wife, who came to watch me with narrowed eyes, as if I were a circus act or a charlatan. Green, the shopkeeper's wife said uncertainly. She'd known my family quite well and had often bought vegetables from my mother. But in the world we now lived in, why should she trust me any more than I trusted her? Why shouldn't she gawk at the nails in my boots, the slingshot in my pocket? The shopkeeper and his wife tested my ability to distinguish by touch. If I could identify silver and gold, what else might I know? Sure enough I could tell green tea from black, navy beans from kidney beans, earth from ashes, honesty from deceit. I had another talent, it seemed. One that made people nervous. After that, rumors flew around quickly enough. There were those who swore that anyone who touched my hand would be visited by bad fortune. I didn't disagree. I wanted the looters to hear about how I could turn the luck of anyone who came near me. And who was to say I wasn't cursed? I had lost my mother and my father and my sister, and sometimes when I caught a glimpse of myself in a shop window, I wondered if perhaps I hadn't lost myself as well. Every time I tried to say my name out loud the word stuck in my throat, a black stone, a silver stone, a stone as white as moonlight. Before long, every shopkeeper on Mam Street knew of my talents and my cloudy eyes. Even the looters, gathered under bridges and on street corners, were wary and stayed clear. In every store, people I'd known all my life hurried when I came to trade what I no longer desired for what I needed. They were forced to be honest with me, and they gave me what I'd come for. Gold and silver in exchange for cranberry juice, white rice, bandages, brown sugar, salt, vitamins. Coins and candlesticks for eggs, tins of baked beans, sugar, vinegar, laundry soap, candles. There were good people in town who were helping out their neighbors and others who saw an opportunity for greed. Some people were busy cleaning the ashes out of the schoolhouse, while others were selling overpriced lanterns and oil and counting their profits. Honorable or not, most people were desperate for good fortune. Many hung horseshoes above their doors. They made certain to keep sprigs of rosemary nearby, to protect them from evil. But I knew better. I was defended with my nails and my thorns. I wore boots with nails, a scarf of black thorns. One time when I was leaving town with my heavy backpack, a woman I recognized, a teacher of mine, called out for me to be careful on the road. She was kindhearted, and I remembered her lessons in language and history. But she wasn't my teacher anymore. I waved, but I hadn't learned anything new from her. I already knew that danger was everywhere. I took a different route home each time to ensure that no one would follow Onion and me. I favored paths so rocky and steep, anyone else would have stumbled. It was the season when the earth turned red and yellow, when the whole countryside was blessed with orange light, but not anymore. Usually the leaves changed slowly: rubies, garnets, amber. This year, they had all dropped off at the same time. This was the season when my sister and I had gathered fallen apples from the trees in our neighbor's orchard. The old woman would chase us away, shouting and throwing stones that dropped harmlessly on the grass. Now, the orchards were bare and the apple trees were as fruitless as fence posts. The hillsides were black; the road littered with garbage. Feral house cats living in the ditches would claw at any kindness, and Onion was so afraid of these wild cats, I had to carry him when they hissed and showed their claws. I tried to avoid the looters who had wrecked my garden. I'd heard they'd taken up residence near the river, at a place made out of half-dead timbers they called the forgetting shack. Some slept beneath bridges, but they all gathered at the fire they kept burning when the dark began to fall. I could smell smoke coming from their direction. When I held up my hands to the east, where they were gathered, I could feel their pain, a kind of pain that was much worse than what I did to myself with my ink and my pins. Once in a while, the looters arrived at a house in town in the middle of the night, threatening the citizens, demanding food. Most of them were no older than me, a few were only eleven or twelve. They had lost their parents, and, one by one, they'd run away from their empty homes. They drank gin until they were dizzy. They made themselves sick with whatever they found in their parents' medicine cabinets, tablets to make them woozy with dreams, pills that kept them up all night. I had seen Heather Jones, the girl I knew who had joined them, panhandling on a corner. She had woven a hundred braids in her hair, and she wore what had once been a beautiful white dress. People walked by without looking, they didn't want to see the emptiness in her eyes, but I put some coins in her tin. I didn't wait for her to thank me. That's not why I did it. It was because I remembered the white dress she wore, how pretty she'd looked in school, how jealous I'd been. Now, the fabric was torn from the brambles she slept upon. Now, it was closer to gray. I could hear the looters every once in a while, music rising from down at the forgetting shack at the river. I felt protected by my bad reputation and the nails I hammered into the trees all around my I house, a warning not to come near. But sometimes I'd wake in the night and I'd listen to their music. I couldn't help myself. Voices carried on the wind, and their voices called to me. Several times, I'd left my sister in my dreams, and risen from my bed under the table. The loneliness I felt cut right through me, and not even sleep could ease my sorrow on nights such as these. Help me, my sister called in my dreams, but I no longer went to her to help her carry water from the well, or sweep the floor, or close the window. One night I went out very late. I made my way through the woods to see the forgetting shack for myself. I watched the looters dancing until their feet were bruised. Their bodies were covered with sweat. Some of them howled, and the sound went down my spine. Some of them spun in circles, until they looked like spires of silver. Standing there alone, I swayed in time with the music. There were drums and tambourines. There was the organ they'd stolen from the church and the flutes they'd taken from the school music room. But this music was different from anything I'd heard before. It was something that scared me and made me want to be closer to it at the very same time. I thought dancing with the looters would be like jumping into the fire. I would never have to think again. All I had to do was join them, do as they said, follow their lead, forget everything that had come before. I laughed out loud at the notion and my laughter made them turn to me, all at once. The boys I'd gone to school with were all looking at me. Most of them had never noticed me before. Now I could probably have any one of them, if that's what I'd wanted. They were lonely the way I was. I could dance all night long with any boy I chose. I could forget right along with them. They started to call to me as if they knew me. They started to come nearer. They thought I was Green, too shy to speak. Green, who had patience and pretty long hair. Green, who would dance with anyone who asked, anyone who grabbed her, anyone who pulled her closer to the fire. Leave her alone, a girl shouted. It was Heather Jones in her dirty white dress. She was drunk, but she recognized me. Does she look like she's one of us? Now the boys examined me closely. They saw the black roses and ravens on my skin. They noticed the nails on my boots, and my clothes, covered with thorns, so that anyone who tried to touch me would surely bleed. They ran from me then, as though I were the dangerous one. They went back to their fire as if they'd never even noticed me standing so close by. I went home, grateful to Heather for calling out. She knew I wasn't like them. All the same, I understood what they were after. I understood wanting to forget. Things that made you remember cut like pieces of glass. A song, a memory, a blade of grass, a white dress, a dream, all of it as painful as the deepest wound. I went home and locked my door. I was glad to be away from those pathetic creatures at the forgetting shack who didn't know how to face the darkness of their lives. That wasn't me. Heather Jones was right. I wasn't afraid of the dark. I didn't mind a certain kind of pain. I welcomed it because it took me away from my loss. It was better than anything at the forgetting shack. It was under my control. I took the pins and the bottle of ink and held them close. Every night I tattooed more black thorns, vines, roses, bats. When I had less skin to cover, the task grew more difficult. I turned to my fingers and toes. My instep. My thigh. I had to squint and take my time. I worked hard, far into the night. Once I fell asleep still clutching my pins, spilled ink spreading across the table in a dark and endless pool. Now when I dreamed, my sister took my hand in hers. She was still like moonlight, but fainter, more sorrowful. She whispered something I couldn't understand. It was as if we spoke differ- ent languages, as if I were losing her even in my dreams. The thorns on my skin were sharp and fierce, like me. The thorns could pierce through any dream. I grew restless in my sleep. I took to avoiding it whenever I could. Green, my sister called to me whenever I grew so tired, I couldn't help but drift off. It was the only word she spoke that I understood, but I couldn't answer to that name. Instead of tears there was soot in my eyes, so I called myself Ash. This was who I had become, but it was also the reason my sister stopped coming to me in my dreams after that. She didn't know me by name anymore, so how could she call to me? When I closed my eyes to search for her, I was a stranger. Treasure I was gathering chestnuts deep in the woods where no one ever ventured, not even the crows, when I heard something nearby. Beside me, Onion began to growl, low in his throat, the way he used to whenever hawks came too close to our garden. Whenever there were strangers in the yard. I bent to the ground, and I could feel footsteps. At first I thought it might be the looters, come after me. This is who I loved But when I touched the air, I could feel regret in the wind. I thought it might be the girl, Heather Jones, with her neat braids and her ruined dress. Every once in a while she left her tin outside my gate. I filled it with bread or cooked rice or a bit of sugar. Sometimes I added a small pot of my asparagus soup. But when I pushed away the overhanging branch of an oak tree in order to peer through, I could feel hope in the stems of the singed leaves. The few birds that were left in the woods were chattering, flapping their wings, hopping from branch to branch. I could hardly see through the shadows, but when I narrowed my eyes I observed something white moving through the bare trees. It wasn't Heather in her torn dress. She slept most of the day, along with the others from the forgetting shack, exhausted from their wild nights. I thought it might be a ghost that approached me. My sister, perhaps, with her snow-white hair, or my mother, m her favorite white shawl, or my father, his beard gone white with the shock of what had happened to our beautiful green world. I dropped to