The Short Life of Sparrows (28 page)

“I can’t. Every day I prolong it, it’s just another day that adds to how much I’ll hurt you. And me.” I blow into my hands to rid them of the cold, and I close my eyes a little when she steps up beside me. We are as frozen and unmoved as the pines, until I find what nerve I have left. My arm settles around her waist as I kiss her head. “I bet this place looks beautiful when the first snow falls.”

They were the wrong words. Or maybe there are no right ones. Her arms tremble and she shakes as the teardrops glide down from her eyes. “I thought you’d at least stay until then.” She lets the blanket drop to the dirt. Stepping away from my embrace and out from underneath the trees, she leans her head back. The moonlight isn’t bright enough to do anything but mute her features. Examining the stars with a tormented gaze, her palms come upward. She cups her hands as if she’s about to pull each and every one of them from their place in the sky. “Button your coat.”

It’s a simple command, and so I button my coat as I walk to her. One cloud bleeds through the black, expanding and giving birth to more gray clouds. They break from one another until the sky above the field is a dense, milky fog. I should watch the magic overhead, but I can’t be torn from her profile as she chants. She’s lovelier than ever before. I hold back my own tears as I recognize her need to always look for peace, even when there’s none to be found. Instead of begging me not to go, she beckons the hushed stillness that only winter can bring.

The snow flutters and waves slowly downward in big feathery pieces. I refuse to ask her what pays the price for us catching snowflakes on our tongues or the white that fills her loose hair. We’ve both paid plenty, and fairness never wins. She tries not to cry again as I brush a stray fleck of snow from her nose. It stops falling as quickly as it started, and we take shelter under a large green pine, where the ground is still dry. I pick up the quilt, and we huddle together in it. Holding her to me, we look at our private slice of the world, all dusted in white. The field shines, but it’s melting quickly since it wasn’t heavy enough to stick. Like crumpled ship sails disappearing into a bottomless sea, the last of the storm clouds fold in on each other until the heavens are dark again.

She whispers another spell as her teeth chatter. A small fire shapes itself on the ground at our feet. “This is the fire I want you to remember when you leave me. When you leave all of us.” She tightens her fingers in mine, pulling my arms tighter around her.

“Daphne?”

She squeezes my palm so hard that I can feel her grief in how her fingers press into my knuckles. “Don’t.”

I do as she says. I don’t say goodbye. And I don’t tell her I feel like the most loved man alive. Or how in love I will always be with a girl who can call the snow with her fingertips. Our faces and hands get pink with the fire’s heat. I rest my chin on the top of her head, and we let the breaking and building of the flames hypnotize us. She curls into me, her eyes blinking with sleepiness. With my back to the tree, I seal her up in the blanket and my arms. I want to fall asleep with her this once—to imagine it’s the beginning of us and not the end.

35

CALLI

I’m almost asleep when the banging happens. There’s a violent thudding, repeated kicking and thumping at the front door. At the same time as the disruption of the noise, I notice my windows flashing with far off lights. The knocking grows alarmingly loud, even though my room is furthest from the front of the house. As I slip out of my blankets and look under my bed for a shawl, my own door flies open. Rowe is behind Lil, and the picture of the two of them entering my bedroom tells me something is wrong. Very wrong.

He has a knife in his belt, and he balls his fists at his sides. His hair is windblown, falling down over his ears instead of being combed and oiled back. “I should’ve figured it out. I should’ve put it all together. Where would they have gone? Tell me now. Mildred thought she was taken. If they get to him, it doesn’t matter how it really is between them. I have to get there before anybody else. Murdoch and I have to hurry.”

“The river.” I hear my answer break in my mouth.

Rowe turns away, and I hear him tearing down our steps. The faintness of his yelling at his horse comes through the walls as Lil runs out of the house behind him. I race to lace my shoes, not bothering with my stockings. With my shawl in my hands, I hurry for the yard.

She stops me on the porch by blocking me with her own body. Lil grips me by the elbow, and I find Mildred rocking in her chair behind us. Lil fumes, her eyes incensed and burning into mine. “What have you children done? What have you done? Do any of you listen to anything I say?”

I try to break from her hold. “I’ve got to get down there.”

“No.” Her hand becomes a metal vice around my wrist. “It’s bad enough that I can’t get to the two of them. Our men are out there, angry and tracking them like hunting dogs. You’re staying here, while Mildred and I hope we can stop this.”

She leaves my side, walking back into the house toward the mantle. Grimoires crash around her. Lil flips their pages, unsatisfied with the contents she’s skimming through. Throwing most of the books aside, she opens the last of them—the oldest and thickest one. Lil bends on her knees with it, and forces her ritual blade through a closed hand. Her bun has toppled from its ties, all of her graying blond hair sweeping at her lap as she rocks. Without waiting for Mildred to come out of her trance, Lil leans forward and back again too. Back and forth she rocks on her knees, holding the cut at her hand to a disintegrating page. A shudder overtakes me. Red lights flash in the trees. The Nightbloods are out there. They are chanting too. I think to myself the same thing Lil so painfully asked me.
What have I just done?
What have
we
all done?

36

ISAIAH

I
lurch from sleep at the sudden blow in my side. There’s no breathing as I gasp and wheeze, desperate for my body to fill with air again. Shiny soles of brown boots I don’t recognize are all that fill my blurred vision as I lie upon the ground absorbing the impact of the kick to my gut. The impulse to throw up to offset the pain is overwhelming. Whoever stands over me wants me to see them first or they wouldn’t be shoving my cheek with the side of their heel. Curling my legs to my chest to block any more hits, I reach my arm out to where she was beside me.

I’m alone on the quilt though. She’s crying somewhere nearby, although I can’t see her. Daphne’s sobs rise and fall, light and high sounds that pierce an otherwise decided silence. As I try to brace my weight and sit up, I hear her. “Don’t.” She keeps begging, “
Please
.” I think I hear her mumble, “I’m so sorry.”

The red mist wafts around me as I finally take a full breath without gagging. Dancing and skipping in the weeds, the fog moves as if it’s an independent, living entity. Golden flecks flash in his eyes as they all relight their lanterns to show how many of them are there. All clothed in their usual black, thirty or so Nightbloods wait in between the trees like vultures. There’s just one distinct face hovering though. Lucas lowers himself to a crouched position, his hands to his knees as he smiles. “How was it? Good?” His medallion sways forward as he bends.

“How was what?” I get up, because I have to. There’s no way of leaving, but he’s not going to leer over me.      

“How was my sister?”

I sneer. The noise from my lips is partly an anxious laugh and partly a disgusted sigh. This filth wouldn’t understand an honest, well-intentioned reply. “I’d never fuck her like this. Not out in the open where people can see. I’m not an animal. Or a Nightblood.”

Lucas snickers, dragging his bottom lip against his top teeth. “You smell like an animal. Like a pink, soft piglet—about to put its curly tail as close to its rump as possible.”

The fear slams me in waves. He’s the one who butchered Odella’s pig, who left a sickening, coded message where I would step on it. How long has Lucas known about us? Shifting on my feet, I’m calculating my way out. Fighting them all would be a death sentence. I’ve been surrounded, yes. Accepted I was about to take a beating because I was never going to overpower someone? Yes.

This isn’t the same. I’ve never been in this situation before. I can’t move. For some reason, I truly cannot budge my arms or legs now. My fingers and toes are solid too, gelling up and becoming useless. The breeze seems to coil, wrapping and slithering around my limbs. A quiet flicking sound comes from his side. Funny how a noise that small changes everything, how a switchblade flipping open squashes any small amount of hope I had.

The blue knife reflects moonlight as he brings it forward from his belt. My chest rattles, my every breath sticking like paste in my ribs. I will myself to run.
Nothing
. I’m counting them as they encircle me. Two. Four. Seven. More of them move in, and I’m done counting. Their whispers are insistent hisses, and I know they’re not going to allow me to get in even one punch. He thumbs the edge of his switchblade, a severe smile widening on his angular face.

Daphne shrieks. “Stop!” Scuffling sounds come from beyond the glow of the lanterns as someone refuses to let loose of her. The man jerks to hold her shadowed frame back from the crowd. Lucas stalls.

“Shut up, Daphne. Don’t you see your Awakening is coming for you? You knew this was meant to be. How could you overlook what your Awakening really meant? Why would you think that I’d let anybody besides myself be your Caster? My sweet, stupid sister. I have your Awakening dream memorized. I’ve watched it until I could nearly taste this damp weather. And I’ve been so patient. I’ve had to pretend I wasn’t aware that every night this summer you’ve been missing your dreams. You see, I’ve fallen in love with your nightmare while you’ve been making yourself this Ordinary’s whore. I’m going to sleep so much better once I disassemble him.”

Instead of panicking, I feel oddly numb. My gut doesn’t churn anymore, as I know it should. I try to find her face in the dark, but I only know where she’s standing from her crying. “You need to leave,” I yell to her. “Hurry. Please get out of here.”

Lucas digs at my neck with his clammy fingers. “No. She stays.” His grip hardens on my windpipe, and I can’t swallow. “She has to learn like every other Seer that she can’t escape her Awakening. And she’s going to realize that big brother knows best.”

As he brings his arms upward, he chants. My body crashes into the packed dirt. The hammering in my temple distorts my sight. “
Don’t watch
,” I want to tell her. If only I could speak. Lucas caresses the edge of the knife before he kneels next to me. My shirt tears easily against the sharp edge, and I hear the flannel shred without any resistance. I close my eyes as the pointed cold metal drags my skin. The unyielding agony of it as he pushes further rips my resolve to pieces. Daphne’s screams challenge my own. I hear my shrieks get higher and louder as Lucas nuzzles my ear. “Bleat some more little lamb.”

I decide not looking is worse. There’s nothing to distract me from the torment if I keep my eyes shut. Pressure. Slicing. Splitting.
Look at the stars
, I tell myself. Lucas slicks his hair out of his face, leaving a clotted trail of blood at his chin. His hands are busy and his face is eager. I’d pray or wish it away, but it’s too late for it to do any good. I stare past him. The night sky is dripping jewels. Earlier it was bursting with snow, snow that she made only for me.

I think of Daphne’s kisses—how she always pulls back slowly in anticipation—waiting for me to lean into her. I think about my mother, studying me from out of the corner of her eye as she stirs dinner. About how the rocking chair she kept in her room was probably always a reminder of losing me, and one she made herself live with. There’s Mildred, rocking in her chair beside me on the porch with a rainbow of colors splotched on her cheeks and sleeves. I see myself and Calli laughing in the field, and she’s nudging my arm as I hide the last dead sparrow from her in my pocket.

This Nightblood can carve me apart. He’ll encounter muscle and bone—and he’ll discover the color red. But he’ll never find these things. Not any of memories that are playing behind my eyes as he raises his knife again. My flesh is a weak, vulnerable thing. But my memories are impenetrable. I’ve hidden them. Let him steal every day after this one. The happiness I had this summer is mine. He can’t have it.

37

CALLI

W
e hear the horses whinny outside, followed by gruff shouting that sounds like Murdoch as a heavy tromping comes up the stairs. Lil doesn’t care how she thrusts the front door open, but she’s pushed instantly out of the way by Rowe and Murdoch as they struggle not to drop the weight in their arms. “Get him to the table,” Murdoch yells. “I’ll need space to heal him. Lil, yellow tallow candles. I’m going to need you and Rowe both. We have to hurry.”

Lil races around the room, taking a bowl and a stack of candles from the corner shelf. I shove everything from the table, the dishes and spoons clanging and crashing across the floor. He’s wrapped in a gray quilt, but even with it over him, the blood soaks through it. Isaiah’s eyes are unfocused, and his mouth makes tiny wheezing sounds. None of them leave a space for me around the table, and I find Daphne standing in the doorway—her hands reddened and her eyes swollen from crying. Taking her arm, I try to help her to a chair. She starts to scream as soon as I touch her.

Rowe looks up as they try to unwind the blanket from Isaiah. “Get her out. Her screaming isn’t going to help anybody concentrate.”

Mildred and I pull Daphne down the hall to my room, unable to keep her quiet. “I’ll sit in the room with her,” Mildred says, a bewildered fear in her eyes as she glances down the hall to the commotion at the table. I barely nod as I shut my door, rushing back to see what I can do. If stitches are involved, Isaiah will need me to hold his hand. And if he broke something, I’ll let him hold my hand as hard as he needs to.