Promise Bound (8 page)

I focused on the one memory Maris was most insistent I see:

Nadia was tucking her four children into the nest she’d made in a small rocky cave on the banks of Basswood Island. She cushioned the cave with leaves and moss. “Quiet down, now,” she told them. “Calder, quit pestering your sisters. I won’t tell you a story until it’s quiet in here.”

“Calder, be quiet,” said a young Maris, her pale lank hair clinging to her face. Pavati and Tallulah giggled and cuddled into each other. Nadia moved over to find her place between Tallulah and Calder. He fit his warm hand into hers.

Satisfied, Nadia began. “Once upon a time—”

“When the world was new,” Calder added. She squeezed his hand. (Or maybe Maris squeezed mine. I could hardly tell where reality ended and this vision began.)

“The lake was warm with the love of the great Maighdean
Mara. From her came the first of our people—three young maids—and do you know their names?”

“Odahingum,” said Maris, “whose name means ‘rippling water.’ ”

“And Namid,” said Pavati. “ ‘Star dancer.’ ”

“Do you know the third, Tallulah?”

Tallulah covered her face with her hands.

“No? The third was Sheshebens, which means ‘small duck.’ ”

“Why weren’t there any boys?” Calder asked.

“The boys came later,” Nadia said. “Many centuries passed, and the world changed. Maighdean Mara worried about the future of her family. She decided to give each of her daughters a gift. A gift that—should they ever leave her—they could show her upon their return, and she would recognize them as her own.

“To Odahingum she gave an iron chariot to travel the lake and survey the boundaries of their kingdom; to Namid she gave a pendant to wear above her heart to store the histories of our people; and to Sheshebens she gave a small copper-handled dagger that she herself had decorated with beach glass.”

I broke away from Maris’s grasp.
“I already know this story,”
I said.

“My mother told you?”
She seemed both excited and offended at the prospect.

“Calder did.”

Her face fell.
“I have to know. Does the necklace work at all?
Does my mother speak to you through Namid’s pendant?”
Maris asked, staring at the necklace with such longing, I could feel the intensity in my own heart.

“I’m not exactly sure what’s happening.”

Maris nodded, then looked away. If we weren’t underwater, I would have sworn she was crying.
“Does she ever mention me?”
she asked, her thoughts choking on the last word.
“Is she proud of me? Does she understand I’ve done the best I could? That I did my best to do what she asked? That I tried my best to keep this family together?”

“I’m sure she understands,”
I said, but I felt the tug at my heart. Because I knew that Nadia wanted much, much more.

J
ust as the last vibrations of Pavati faded away, fingernails raked down my back. I wheeled around to defend myself against an attack, but it was only Lily, accusing me through the water.

“Ha! Scared you!”
she said.

“I thought you were Maris.”

Lily laughed guiltily.
“That
would
be scary. But I’m glad you took my advice and came out without me.”

“Apparently I didn’t. You shouldn’t be out here alone.”

“I’m not alone,”
she said. A serpentine current pulled at
her hair. She wasn’t swimming in her usual band T-shirt, and my stomach leapt into my throat. How many times had I seen my sisters naked without any thought of it? This was a first for Lily.

She eyed me speculatively. I didn’t know what to do. Or how to react. All I could manage to say was,
“I see you’ve given up on modesty. No band T-shirt?”
I tried not to let the internal eye roll show on my face. I was pretty sure—if she hadn’t caught me by surprise—I could have come up with something much smoother.

“It started to feel kind of silly. Especially since I thought I was alone.”

“Do you want me to leave?”
I asked.

She shrugged, and that ambivalent gesture hurt more than a yes.

“We should go back,”
I said, trying not to show the wound she’d inflicted.
“Your mom will have dinner ready soon.”

Lily coiled around my chest and squeezed to show me how strong she was getting. For a second, I was too transfixed by the bright pink flash of her new body to respond. Man, she was beautiful.

Once more, she pulled her fingers across the width of my chest, only this time gently, like the brush of long grass, circling me as if I were prey, laughing at my confusion. I’d never seen Lily so overtly flirtatious. We should swim without Jason more often.

When her fingertips reached my right shoulder, she circled, skimming them across my back, then over my left shoulder, until she was facing me again. I caught a flash
of smile. Her behavior reminded me of Pavati’s, and I was both tempted to lunge at her and to hold her at bay for my own protection. But when she darted away from me—so fast I had to trail her thoughts to follow—I opted for the former. A second later, I lost the connection.

“Where are you?”
I called out to a silent lake.

“Right here.”
She grabbed my ribs from behind.

“Man, you are getting seriously good at quieting your thoughts,”
I thought, half impressed, half offended.
“I can barely hear you at all.”

“Can you hear me now?”

“Loud and clear.”
I pulled her into my arms and we spiraled together into deeper water. I felt the pulse of her belly against mine, basked in the images that flickered through her mind. Her thoughts were fleeting, like a slide show running too quickly. Some of them were so beautiful I tried to cling to them, to reinforce them with my own: the two of us together. Forever.

But one of those slides worried me more than Maris ever could. Lily hoped I wouldn’t notice it, but she wasn’t quick enough to shield me from an image of myself in a car, leaving Bayfield, without her in the passenger seat.

“Lily, there’s something I want to ask you.”

“Later,”
she said.
“You and I need to talk about a certain dagger, and how it ended up in Gabby Pettit’s purse.”

If she meant to distract me, it worked. I could feel the blood draining from my face.
“What?”

Lily raised her eyebrows, then darted toward shore.

As was our habit, I left the water first. My clothes were
where I’d shed them—but now neatly folded—on the dock. Lily’s were wind-tangled in the willow branches.

“Do you want me to wait with you?” I asked, but she shook her head. Despite my persistent requests to hold her hand through her painful transformation, she always made me leave her behind, to suffer alone. It was the worst part of my week.

Reluctantly, I entered the sleeping house. Mrs. H had left us dinner, wrapped in foil, but I didn’t touch it. Instead, I climbed the stairs to Lily’s bedroom.

I flipped on the lamp in the hopes of finding a sweatshirt easily. She was going to need it when she came in. The room was in its usual state of disaster, so I didn’t find what I’d come for. Instead, I found Lily’s journal,
MY SCRIBBLINGS (Vol. 3)
, half tucked under her bed.

I hesitated. A muffled scream and crackling
pop
came from the beach. I took a flinching step toward the book, then stopped. She’d kill me if I read it. I couldn’t invade her privacy like this. But still … Maybe she’d written something about Pavati. Maybe she had started to write a response to Pavati’s letter. No. What was I thinking? It was wrong. But maybe if I picked the journal up, something would fall out. Accidentally.

I crossed the room and picked the journal up, holding it in both hands. What secrets did Lily keep inside? What new poems had she written? I held the spiral binding and shook the notebook three times. A black-and-white magazine clipping of a woman in a formal gown slipped from the pages and fluttered to the floor. But nothing else. I won’t deny I was disappointed.

I sat down on the bed. After a few seconds, I turned back the corner of the cover and peeked inside. It was a whole page covered in
Lily Hancock-White, Lily White, Mrs. Calder White
. Over and over again in curling, flower-laden cursive writing. It made me laugh out loud. At least I wasn’t the only one dreaming about our future.

I
watched with envy as Calder pulled himself into the shallows, curled into a fetal position, then extended with a giant popping sound. The pain I knew too well was evident on his face; he grit his teeth, and the veins in his neck strained under his smooth skin, but he was so well practiced that no sound escaped his lips. In less than a minute he was fully human, pushing himself to standing, rivulets of water snaking their way over his scarred shoulders. The muscles in his arms and legs bounced involuntarily, still in the throes of aftershock. He kept his back to me as he found his clothes on the dock.

When he was dressed, he turned around with an expression that showed more pain than anything I’d just witnessed. “Do you want me to wait with you?” he asked, but he knew my answer even before I shook my head.

He nodded and walked up to the house, head bowed. After the front door shut behind him, he reappeared in the kitchen, closed the window, and drew the curtains. I took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. Then another. With my jaw set, I swam as close to shore as I could, then pulled myself onto the sand with my hands. I did as I’d seen Calder do, curling into a ball, pulling all my energy to the center, letting it stew there until I felt it hit a boiling point, then extended straight as a board.

I couldn’t do it like Calder did it. A scream raced up my throat and I smothered it in the crook of my elbow. I bit down on my arm to choke off the next scream and panted through my teeth. When my lungs were empty, I sucked in the air that cut like razors across my lungs, giving me nothing more than the ability to scream again.

It was fifteen minutes of this torture—like giving birth to myself—before I regained my legs and found my clothes tangled in the willow branches. I hobbled up the dark porch steps, clinging to the railing for support. I entered the house as silently as I could, camouflaging the sound of my wet footsteps in Dad’s gentle snores. I climbed the stairs on all fours, and when I got to the top, noticed my bedroom lamp was on and that someone was moving in front of it, casting strange shadows down the hallway.

I braced myself against the wall and then—when I reached it—my doorframe. “What are you doing, Calder?”

Calder threw
MY SCRIBBLINGS
on the bed and ran to hold me up as my legs buckled. “You got all the way up here by yourself? You should have called me to help. Oh, God, you’re bleeding.” He wiped the blood off my shoulder, then pulled a sweatshirt down over my head and body.

“I didn’t want to wake anyone,” I said. “Were you reading my journal?”

“No. Of course not. I was getting you something warm to put on, and I knocked it off your dresser.”

Liar
. “I didn’t leave it on my dresser.”
Jeez, what did he read?

“Well, someone put it there. Probably your mom trying to clean up this pigsty.” He braced me as he walked me closer to the bed. “Have you been writing any new poetry?”

“Not much.” I picked up my journal and buried it in my underwear drawer.

“Lily, can I ask you something?”

I closed my eyes and exhaled, turning away from him. “Not now, Calder. I’m really tired.”

“Just one thing.”

“What?”

“Are you planning something behind my back?”

My bedding was a jumbled mess. I straightened the blankets as if I cared how things looked. “Like what?”

“Are you planning something with Pavati? Are you going to join her? Permanently? In the lake?”

“Not without you. Although I wish you’d …” I almost said,
Consider it
. But as much as I hated the idea that I was the cause of his severed family relations, I couldn’t put that
on him. After all he’d been through, I couldn’t guilt him into it. Instead, I said, “I would never do that without you.”

He traced the shadows under my eyes with his thumbs, then reached behind my neck. My muscles tightened as he undid the clasp that held the pendant around my neck.

“No,” I said, grabbing his wrists. His eyes gazed into mine, and … reluctantly … I released my grasp. He laid the pendant gently on my bedside table. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, only inches away and yet so distant.

“Just for a while,” he said. “You’ll sleep better.”

“You’ll stay with me?”

“Just for a little bit. Until you fall asleep. I don’t want your dad to get the wrong idea.”

We crawled into bed, and Calder pulled the covers up tight around my chin. I pressed my back against his chest; he pulled his knees up behind mine until we fit together like puzzle pieces. He kissed my hair. I waited for him to fall asleep.

The clock slowly changed its digital numbers as Calder’s body—just as slowly—grew warmer and heavier behind me. When the weight of his arm was too much to bear, I rolled out from under it and waited to see if he’d notice me missing.

His face was smooth and guiltless. Maybe he really had been cleaning my room, but still, I pulled out
MY SCRIBBLINGS
to see what he might have read.

I flipped through the pages, finally stopping at a Tennyson poem I’d copied down in an attempt to memorize it. A couple of the lines had hit me hard at the time, and I’d circled them in red ink.