Mist upon the Marsh: The Story of Nessa and Cassie (15 page)

Presently, as she looked at Cassie, she felt that familiar expansion of her heart, and that precious lightening of its load. But it seemed that she was beginning to doubt the possibilities of looking upon her any more than infrequently, and was beginning to doubt her right even to experience such a lightening.

If Cassie guessed anything of the true inquiries which lay beneath Nessa’s question (as Nessa suspected she did), she made no attempt to express the fact. She only moved a bit nearer to Nessa, and lifted her eyes to the moon, as if in some sort of effort to read whatever writing Nessa seemed to see there.

“I’ve never had this before,” she said finally.

“Had what?” asked Nessa.

“Someone to talk to.”

Nessa deemed this a fitting opportunity for her to look back at Cassie, and to cease for the moment feeling sorry for herself. She looked into Cassie’s face, and saw another sort of sadness there: one much different, and much heavier, than her own.

“Well, you can tell me whatever you like,” she said. “Whenever you like.”

Cassie’s eyes seemed to attain almost a piercing quality, in that moment; and struck down deep into the heart that had returned to Nessa.

“Do you really mean that?” she asked. “Because you shouldn’t say things like that, Nessa, if you don’t mean them.”

“I wouldn’t say it, if I didn’t mean it. I can promise you that.”

This time, it was Cassie who seemed most interested in the moon. “There are things I would like to tell you,” she said. “Great big things. But I don’t know what they would make you think of me.”

“Nothing less, I assure you.”

Cassie offered her a thin smile. “You can’t be sure of that, Nessa.”

“I can, Cassie.”

Cassie took a deep breath; and it seemed, as she began to speak, that her voice shook. “I’ve been pregnant four times,” she said. “I lost all of the babies. Or, to be more honest, I did away with the last one. The first was right out of high school; and the last was just before I left my boyfriend’s trailer. His name was Bobby-Ray.” She paused, and
her face took on something of a cruel aspect; she smiled as she added, “Or at least, it still is – unless he’s died. I haven’t heard he has. I hope he has.”

“I sincerely hope you didn’t feel as if you had to tell me that,” said Nessa. “You needn’t tell me things, if you’d rather not share them.”

“But I did,” said Cassie; and now her voice was flat, and toneless; empty of any feeling at all. “I did have to tell you, Nessa. You need to know that I’m not who you think I am.”

“And how do you know who I think you are?”

“Whatever you think – it can’t be the truth.”

“The truth is highly overrated,” said Nessa; though the truth behind
that
could have been, that she was only attempting to minimise the effects of her own omissions.

But Cassie said nothing. They sat for some time more, without a word passed between them, till Nessa began to realise the unimportance of the matter, and reached out for Cassie’s hand.

“What is the past,” she said, “in who you are? Whatever happened may have changed you, may have brought you to where you are – but all that matters now, is where you’re standing. Not why.”

“I don’t know where I stand, Nessa,” Cassie returned quietly. “I don’t know anymore.”

“Next to me,” Nessa said firmly.

Cassie turned to her, and asked, “How did that happen, exactly?”

“That’s my point,” said Nessa. “What does it matter?”

The shouting from the pavilion had died down, and was replaced now only by the sound of a soft song, drifting down to the river from the jukebox. Nessa pondered a moment; but then stood up, and extended her hand to Cassie. “Dance with me,” she said.

Cassie looked at her for a little, with something of a wondering expression; but then accepted her hand, and rose up from the grass. She seemed to consider every movement before she made it, and appeared more uneasy than she had been, that morning in her bedroom. Yet still she leant towards Nessa, and after a second or two, lowered her head to her shoulder. Nessa wrapped one arm round her waist, and ran her other hand down the smoothness of her hair, flowing down over her back.

The music played on, and the red light fell over them, spilling like punch across their faces, with all of the sweetness and none of the stick. Nessa pressed her cheek to Cassie’s, and turned round and round with her through the grass, up and down along the riverbank.

“I don’t know how to feel,” whispered Cassie. “Should I be happy – or should I be scared?”

“I don’t think I can answer that for you,” said Nessa. “But only let me try something; and then you can tell me how you feel.”

She put a hand to Cassie’s face, and looked into her eyes. They seemed something of a darker blue, there in the whiteness of her face, which appeared somehow even whiter beneath the strange hue of the light. A silver beam of moonlight fell down over her; but rather than mingle with the red to create a different shade, it only stood apart, adding a sort of otherworldly shine to a beauty that was incomparable, even without it.

She had not even the chance to kiss her; for, even as she thought of it, Cassie raised her own head, and pressed her lips to Nessa’s. They moved with a kind of mad
desperation, having been only so recently unsure of themselves, but insatiable now in what they wished for.

They danced long into the night, till the light upon the grass lost its redness, and was given over entirely to the sheen of the moon. The jukebox ceased its singing, and car doors slammed in the lot, as the party under the pavilion called an end to its night. For long minutes, there was the sound of their exchanging goodbyes, and that of their engines rolling and revving; but then the night fell quiet, disturbed by nothing but the soft chirping of the crickets, the clear calls of the whippoorwills, and the gentle flowing of the river.

It was all too much. Nessa felt her heart, swelling to bursting, and could do nothing to take her eyes from Cassie’s face. Yet her mind filled also in that moment with thoughts of every other part of her life, that existed elsewhere – the details of which she had been trying perhaps too hard to keep at bay. It seemed that, in order to find a secure place in which to anchor Cassie, she was forced to discard all other things that were moored already, in the dock that was much too small to contain all that Nessa loved and needed. And besides all this, she felt the suffocation of her own home filled with twenty-seven faces: sixteen of which she was unaccustomed to, and unsettled by. She imagined each of those faces, prying her with questions, and fixing her with suspicious glances, each time she returned home from an absence – an absence which Cassie had filled. And what to do, when came the time for the joining ceremony? What to tell Orin? What to tell her mother and father?

She wondered, for a moment, if perhaps she was being overly impetuous with all of these complex thoughts. After all – how long had it truly been? How long had it been, since Nessa first saw Cassie’s face, there beside her table at Wiley’s Diner? How long after that, had she sat beside her in the bed of the pickup, waiting for Caramon to return to himself? And how long after
that,
that she flew to her upon some wild impulse, caused in the first place by Cassie’s request that she return? How long after – how long after – that she danced her with her here on the riverbank, so very close to her that her very soul seemed to ache? All of this seemed to signify a surety, a surety that Nessa had never felt before – and one that she certainly could not deny.

But still, she could find no will to explain her difficulty, and could not yet bring herself to admit any sort of defeat. And so she only continued to smile, and to hold Cassie’s hand in her own, as they traced their path back to the lot.

~

Sometime after midnight, the Pontiac resumed its place in the drive of 245 LeMontagne Boulevard. The two occupants of the vehicle sat for a while in silence, each immersed in her own thoughts – though, it should be noted, that the thoughts of each were of the other. Even while they looked out of their respective windows, seeing nothing at all but images impressed already behind their eyes, their hands joined; but the silence continued.

Nessa turned her face towards the stars, and pondered their infinite distance. Yet it seemed, almost, that if she were only to reach out her hand – well, it seemed that she could gather them all up between her fingertips, so long as she did not loose her grip too soon, and thence only lose them again to their rightful place. She thought that she could simply reach out, and collect herself a great handful, so that she might put them all into a Mason jar, and give them to Cassie. For it seemed that such a thing was all she had
to
give her – and so the wish drove deeper and deeper down into her heart, till it was all she could imagine, all she could think of. She was still weighing the possibility of the task, against the foolishness that it had seemed to smack of from the very beginning; when Cassie’s voice sounded from her left-hand, and she was forced to abandon the outline of her plan altogether. A kind of blank despondence started up immediately in the shallow place between her stomach and her chest, filled now with a sort of shivering cold.

“I have to be at work in the morning,” said Cassie. “I should get to bed.”

“Of course,” said Nessa. “Goodnight, Cassie.”

She pushed open the door, and made to leave the car, but felt suddenly Cassie’s hand gripping her arm.

“Are you all right?”

Cassie nodded. “I’m fine. It’s just . . .”

She seemed not able to conclude her thought.

Unwilling to press her, Nessa simply leant across the seat, and kissed her cheek. She had very nearly displaced her entire body from the vehicle, this time, when Cassie’s voice recalled her once again.

“I don’t know if you realise what this is to me,” she said softly. “Do you realise?”

Nessa knew not how to answer. Again, she thought of a jar full of stars; and wondered if it would serve as sufficient compensation, for all of the things that she could not tell Cassie; and for all of the reasons why she could not be what Cassie needed her to be. There rose up a fierce hatred, only of herself, as she looked into Cassie’s face; and she wished with all of her might that she could only wipe the memory of herself clean away, so that Cassie would remember nothing of her at all. Nessa would keep her own memories, and sift through them each day, with a heart that hurt somewhat less with the knowledge that Cassie could not do the same. She turned over each event of the day, and of days past, in her mind, and demanded an answer from herself, as to why she had begun such a terribly large thing – knowing all the while that none of the seeds she sowed could ever bear fruit.

Oh, why had she done such a thing? Why had she seen only the present, and not the conclusion? Why?

But looking now at Cassie, and feeling within her own breast the tug of her

heart – she could not bring herself either to lie, or to speak a word of parting.

“I know,” she said simply. “I know, Cassie.”

“Then please don’t forget.”

It was all she could do to keep the tears from her eyes, and from her voice. She only leant again towards Cassie, and embraced her tightly. “I won’t,” she whispered. “Sleep well, Cassandra MacAdam.”

She leapt out of the open door with all the speed she could muster, and ran to the place by the curb, where she had parked the pickup truck. She moved swiftly, so that she should not have to look again at Cassie.

She wiped at her eyes with the heel of her hand, and pushed the truck quite to its limit, in her desperation to reach the end of the street. She pulled past the stop sign, and out onto the main road; glanced once, against her own will, into the rearview mirror; and caught sight of Cassie, who was watching as her taillights disappeared into the dark.

Chapter XVIII:

Casualties of W
ar

A
t Dog’s Hill, she found the house concluding a late supper, and talking loudly with one another in the dining room. When she entered, Caramon rose smiling to kiss her cheek, and asked, “Where have you been, sister?”

“Out for a drive,” Nessa replied.

“You have been driving all day!” Caramon exclaimed, with the faintest hint of a remonstrance entering his voice. “How very strange. But anyway – we attempted to delay supper for you, but then became rather too hungry to carry out our intended plan. Eat quickly, then, so we can run.”

And there was nothing more said on the subject. The tables returned to their conversations; and yet there was one individual, a single one, who drew Nessa’s attention. There was Leyra, staring at her, and sniffing the air almost imperceptibly. None but Nessa noticed either this, or her chill countenance; but it was enough, at any rate, to elicit a sort of ticking apprehension in Nessa. Her eyes locked for some seconds with Leyra’s.

Finally, Orin rose to take her hand, and drew her down into the seat beside him. Ceir came bustling out of the kitchen, to kiss Nessa’s forehead and deposit a plate of food before her. Nessa smiled somewhat sickly, and thanked her.

She could not help glancing, ever and anon, towards Leyra; and found that every time she did, she very nearly lost the contents of her stomach, which she was steadily and anxiously increasing. She breathed freely only when the table broke up, and wished one another good night. Yet Leyra fixed her with a hateful gaze, as she attempted to flee the dining room; and she kept her eyes upon her, as all the young runners made their way out-of-doors. When they had changed their shapes, the tension passed away, and was replaced with the customary feeling of the night against their furs; but when finally they returned to the house, and Nessa made to hurry away to her quarters, she saw that the attentions Leyra paid to her had not been diminished. So she paced her bedroom, striding madly to and fro, and stopping sometimes to look towards the lightened window.

Perhaps she had been too hasty. Perhaps it was good that she had not said goodbye – for perhaps it had not
been
goodbye! Why must she stay away? Why must she leave Cassie all alone?
Why?

Still she was pacing, and still she was thinking furiously, when there came a knock at the door. She raised her head, and growled; certainly loudly enough for the knocker to hear.

“I would like to speak with you, Nessa.”

Leyra’s voice. The sound of it served only to raise Nessa’s ire; and she was nearly in a state of frenzy, as she wrenched open the door.

Leyra pushed directly into the room, her head held aloft, and her eyes slanted towards Nessa.

“There is something strange happening,” she said. “Something strange with you, Nessa. The others don’t see – because they don’t know you, not like I do.”
             

“Leave me be, Leyra,” Nessa hissed. “Don’t anger me.”

Leyra came near to her, and drew her face towards her own. She poked a finger into her chest.

“And what would you do?” she whispered. “What would you do to me?”

“Something I would surely regret. But make no mistake – I will do it just the same. Take your hands from me!”

She thrust Leyra away from her. Leyra fell to the floor, and crashed into the wall. It seemed she had hit her head; for when she put her fingers to her scalp, they came away stained with red.

“You
will
regret that,” said Leyra. “You shall pay dearly for it – and you will regret it.”

She climbed unsteadily to her feet; wobbled twice upon her shaking knees; but managed somehow to sweep haughtily from the room, in quite the same manner as she had entered.

The door banged after her, and rattled for a moment in its frame. Nessa stood watching it for some minutes, trapped in a daze of anger and horror; but slid finally down to the floor, and crawled into a corner, where she drew her knees up under her chin, and began to sob.

~

When she rose later in the day from her bed, she found that the image of Leyra’s angry countenance had become lodged behind her eyes; and that its effect was one overpowering, and greatly inspiring of fear. As she issued out into the corridor, she found herself looking all about, in the case that Leyra should be attempting to sneak up on her. She spent the entire day practising just such precautions, peering either way before she turned in any direction, and looking ever over her shoulder. She was very relieved, therefore, when Caramon suggested that they head to the little theatre in town, so as to view a double-feature playing there. When the others asked him what was playing, he said that he knew not; but what did it matter, so long as there was popcorn?

They made ready to leave at two o’clock. Dechtire was on the hand of Caramon, and Nessa on that of Orin, as they passed out of the house. A few of the others had expressed a desire to accompany them; and so, instead of the pickup truck, they loaded into a large van which had been brought from the house of Huro. They began to roll along through the high grass; and indeed, Nessa felt a small amount of peace settle down over her heart, as they bumped across the field, and the untainted scent of summer poured in through the open windows.

Indeed, the outing proved very beneficial to her. She actually enjoyed herself at the theatre, where there played a pair of comedies that were so very moronic, they could be called naught else but entertaining. She sat in betwixt Orin and Caramon, and held to each of their hands while she laughed. But upon returning home, she could not help looking to the diner; and as they turned down the right fork of Junction Road, she could not help wishing for the left. Yet she said nothing, and only continued to smile, albeit perhaps a little mechanically. By the time she sat down to a late lunch in the dining room, she had begun to sigh repeatedly; but the sound was lost in that of the others’ talk.

She spent the remainder of the day in her quarters, awaiting the night run. She sometimes read; sometimes jotted and scribbled the incomplete thoughts which strayed repetitively through her mind; sometimes lay staring at nothing, and sometimes slept fitfully. Yet even her own considerable personal distraction could not keep her ears from
pricking, and her eyes from snapping open, when there came the sound of screaming, loud and thick there upon the sultry evening air.

She leapt out of bed, and hurried downstairs, where she found all of the others gathered together in the foyer.

“Then it was none of you?” she asked. She breathed a great sigh of relief; but still, upon sniffing the air, could very practically detect a faint scent there upon it, consisting, it seemed, of pain and discord.

“If they belonged to none of us,” said Dahro, “then those could only have been the screams of humans. The Ziruk cannot make such sounds; and yet I fear that they have some hand in whatever is taking place. Our runners will investigate, accompanied by two of the sires. The rest of us will remain here. We must be prepared for every possibility!”

It was decided that Huro and Ayo would escort the runners. Though Dahro knew that he could not keep his own children from the task, he stepped forward to kiss and embrace them. Afterwards he placed a comforting arm round Ceir’s shoulders, for she was looking very distraught, as she watched Nessa and Caramon join the hunting party. The sound of the screams, tinged so obviously with mortal pain and fear, had left an impression upon her very brain; and she could scarcely see through the tears in her eyes, though she knew full well that her own children were the strongest of the entire party.

She watched, as eighteen human shapes issued out into the night; and gazed worriedly out of the window, as eighteen wolfen ones completed the distance betwixt the hill and the wood.

The runners searched the trees for long minutes, picking their way to and fro, sniffing madly, and examining closely each place they stepped. They looked for footprints, either human or Ziruk, but found nothing.

After a while, however, there came the sound of new screams. Two voices, both feminine. The runners pursued the sound, but it seemed ever to move, and to fade, only to take up a new strain in an entirely new location. The smell of sweat and fear was in the air, but this too proved inconsistent with a precise place of trouble.

But finally – finally there came a scent stronger than sweat, stronger than fear. It was that of blood.

This time, there was no shifting of the direction whence the odour originated. The runners moved swiftly through the wood, and came quickly upon what they sought: the bodies of what appeared to be two young women, their flesh bleeding and torn beyond the point of recognition. Some of the runners fell back, at the horror of the sight; but those bolder of heart pressed forward, in search of the perpetrators of the heinous crime.

Nessa and Caramon were at the head of this group. But Huro howled after them, to call them back. He shifted for a moment into human form, and said:

“We know too little. This is some kind of trap.”

Caramon changed his own shape, and said to Huro, “If this were a trap, they would be already upon us!”

Huro peered warily about, monitoring the nature of every shivering tree branch, every shifting shadow. “We know too little,” he repeated. “We must leave.”

Unable as he was to argue with an Endalin so much his senior (not to mention the head of a house), Caramon followed suit as Huro returned to wolfen form, and trailed moodily after him towards the entrance of the forest.

But after only a little, strange sounds began to echo at either hand; and there could be heard on occasion the sound of fleeting but heavy footsteps, in the underbrush all around. The runners increased their pace.

The noise of following feet grew louder. Finally, the runners glanced back – and could make out a great patch of even deeper blackness, there between the trees. This darkness moved, just as swiftly as they themselves did move.

Again, the runners escalated their speed; and there came the sound of rapid footfalls following after them. When they emerged into the open field, they looked back once more – and saw that the patch of darkness had halted, there at the tree-line.

The runners hurried into the hill; into the house, and down to the parlour, where the sires waited with the elder women.

The runners changed their shapes. “There are two humans,” announced Ayo, “dead in the forest. We were pursued, it seems, by a group of Ziruk. But their numbers were not great enough, I suppose, to risk overtaking us outside the trees.”

Dahro frowned at his words; but frowned still more, as he surveyed the group. “Where is Huro?” he asked.

The runners looked all about, and echoed a great many gasps; for indeed, Huro was not with them.

~

There was an instant onslaught of intense commotion. Both Huro’s brother and mate attempted to run out-of-doors, so as to search the field behind the house. There were so very many voices, saying so very many different things, that Dahro was forced nearly to scream, to make himself heard.

“We must all remain together,” he said firmly. “We must make haste – for Huro may be fighting for his very life, as we speak. So come! Change your shapes, and we will run to him.”

And so, it was done as Dahro bade; and the house set off into the darkness. They were a fearsome sight, all twenty-seven of them together; and it was doubtful, whether any Ziruk (that was, if the whole of their numbers did not wait beneath the trees) would make to attack them. They came again to the place where the bodies lay, but did not find Huro there. Thereafter they broke into two groups, and went searching East and West; but still they saw, and heard, nothing. They kept on through the night, unwilling to leave Huro to his fate, without trying to their utmost ability to keep him from it. And yet naught came of their efforts.

When the day broke over the trees, they all came together at the tree-line. They counted their numbers, then – and discovered an awful thing. Kael, it seemed, was nowhere to be found.

They returned to the house in a state of panic. Pala and Neim were in a terrible state, and needed be ushered into the parlour on the arms of Ceir and Ima. Everyone took seats around them, and sat with horrified looks upon their faces. The entire forest had been searched; and nothing had been found. They had gone twice, that night, into the trees – and each time one of their sires was taken. They came away to discover them gone, only to realise afterwards that there was nothing they could do to save them. It was cowardly, ghost-like warfare – but it had got the better of them.

First, Dahro placed the call to Mindren; and then decided, that it was his unavoidable duty to contact the local police. He was just about to make this second call – when there came the sound of heavy pounding at the front door. The entire house raced to meet it. Dahro crept forward with Baer and Ayo, and pulled the door open carefully. The sunlight was bright, and hid nothing in its radiance; but there was no movement to be seen.

And yet there, just before them, there was illumined a dreadful sight. On two tall wooden stakes, fixed into the ground just below the porch, were fastened the heads of Huro and Kael.