The May Queen Murders (29 page)

his hands on my hips, his lips against my head. How I wanted to col-

lapse 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

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water and rags and scrubbed wood. The garland had left greenish

stains around the window. It hadn’t mattered. The bad wasn’t thwart-

ed. My fingers burned from the water, sore from the rag’s friction.

“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 equip-

ment 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.

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“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 ob-

stacle 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 wee-

pin’ over her dead sister or another Aunt Rue half mad with grief

over Heather.
I
don’t want to die.”

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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 mad-

man 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 kil -

ing him while the kil ing was good. It was wrong. 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 twitch-

ing. 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 of last night.”

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, the dark shields under

his eyes — maybe bruises from Veil throwing him off, I wasn’t sure

which. The cut on his forehead scabbed. “This
thing
comes hulkin’

from the field.”

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“What’d it look like?”

“Enormous. Tal . 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. Stil , 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 smel , 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, watch-

ing, intent on anything coming from the across the water. They’d

never let us cross the bridge. 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.

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“N-nothing,” I said.

“I know you. Something’s up.” He hurried his horse to walk along-

side 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 dis-

mounted 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.

“Mamie said acorns are for protection,” I said.

“When I made it, I didn’t know what danger was in the Glen.” He

ran his thumb over the brown nut. “Maybe it’s why you’re still here.”

We trundled down the bank to the river. The water was shallow,

and rocky shoals and parched earth stuck up along the shores. Still

there was a chance we could step off the shoal into three feet of water

or be sucked down thirty feet. The river was dangerous and unpre-

dictable.

“Are you sure about this?” Rook asked.

“I can swim,” I replied.

He deflected the lead to me to cross the river. It was scarcely deep

enough to wet the hem of my skirt. I held my shoes and socks to

keep them dry. We made it to the other side and dragged ourselves

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to the outer band of the tree line. As long as we stayed near the river

and watched the sun, we’d go in the right direction. Rook trusted my

instincts, and I released a tentative breath once we reached Potter’s

Field. No one from the Glen was stationed here. They were probably

watching the fields or farther north by Denial Mil .

Yet I knew that opening in the trees and squashed undergrowth

where Heather had gone into the woods. Maybe she’d come too close

to Birch. Maybe he’d seen girl skin, smelled her, and was drawn back

from where he’d come.

According to Heather’s directions on the map, which were crude

at best, we were at the end. But shouldn’t there be something more?

There was nothing here. What was I missing? The cover of the trees

was denser, trunks like posts for watchmen. The interplay of dark

and light, sun and shadow, blurred the leaves above with shrubs be-

low. In a large oak, a tree surely two centuries old, the trunk was

partial y cleaved and moss unraveled down the side and spread out

in a grayish-green berm on the ground.

Rook knelt, running his hand over the raised hump in the soil.

“It’s cushion moss. The only other place it grows in any amount

’round here is Potter’s Field.”

“Is that strange?” I asked.

“It makes me wonder what’s underground.”

The way the moss spread in strange heaps, it didn’t follow the oak

tree’s roots, as if someone formed the ground’s swell in time long

past and the earth did as it always did — reclaimed what was its own.

These were the mounds on Heather’s map, I had to believe. I wan-

dered along the length of the berm, pushing back the undergrowth

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with my toe. Chunks of lichen-coated stone sank into the ground

every so often.

“Rook? Look at this.” I pointed to the stones. “They’re too exact to

be natural, right?”

“Shit.” He wiped his mouth and measured out a few more rocks.

“They’re graves.”

I wrapped my hammer within my fist. “I don’t get it. I expected to

find something — a shack or something — but not a cemetery. If you

lived out in the woods, where would you go?”

“A cave,” Rook replied. “You’d stay dry, maybe build a fire. The

river’s to our east, but Pops had some old maps that showed it wound

back in these woods. There are bluffs. Odds are there’s a cave or two

near those bluffs. Are you sure this is where Heather’s map ends?”

I retraced the moss along the ground. Something crushed under

my foot, something that didn’t snap with the crispness of a twig. My

skirt hem lifted.

A shard of white.

A scattering of pointed, pale stones.

Teeth.

“R-R-Rook.” Suddenly, my back pressed against something hard.

Unyielding, the same way Birch Markle’s body felt behind me the

night in Potter’s Field. Whipping around, hammer in fist, I buried

the hammer’s claws into the old oak’s trunk. And immediately felt

foolish.

“You okay?” Rook asked, jogging toward me.

“Look down.”

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He nudged aside a fern and wrinkled his nose at the bare bones

and teeth. “What animal’s that?”

“Maybe a skunk.” I grabbed for my hammer, tried to yank it from

the tree, but it wouldn’t budge. The claws were too embedded in the

bark.

Rook braced his foot against the trunk, near the deep fissure at the

oak’s base, and curled both his hands around my hammer. The bark

was so lush with moss his footing slid before he gave a decent jerk.

The tree yielded.

Instead of only my hammer sliding out from its hold, the fissure

in the oak opened, and a burlap bag tipped out, landing on the un-

dergrowth.

“What the hel ’s that?” Rook asked.

I examined the bag. It’d been wedged inside the tree for ages, the

fabric patchy with stains. A length of rope tied it closed. Rook hand-

ed me his hunting knife, and I cut at the rope. My fingers were numb

as I opened the burlap.

Something dead was in the sack.

Something that had died long ago.

Rook wheeled away, his stomach revolting, and stooped over be-

hind another tree. My gag reflex kicking in my throat, I lifted the bag

— no heavier than a thirty-pound dog and dumped it out. The clunks

like small logs hitting each other shook my teeth, and I opened my

eyes to the pile of bones.

Ribs. The spiny worm of vertebrae.

A human skull with a hole fracturing the forehead.

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Rook wiped his mouth. “That’s a bullet hole.”

Amid the bones beneath me, there were trinkets. Animal claws

strung on a necklace. Tufts of fur. This was a body that’d been mur-

dered.

Long before Heather and Violet.

“We gotta get my pops,” he said and hooked his hand under my

arm to pull me from the skeleton. “There’s gotta be some way to

identify who this is.”

Find it.

I rolled away the skull and used a stick to poke through the rem-

nants of clothing until I saw a hand. The bones were dark from