The Peculiar Night of the Blue Heart (5 page)

Mrs. Mannerd returned to her knitting, muttering something about the children always breaking the few valuables she owned.

Marybeth sat huddled by the fire, with her eyes fixed on the flame.

“What happened to your pretty drawing, Marybeth?” Mrs. Mannerd asked.

Marybeth winced, as though the question had awoken her from a dream.

“I ate it,” Lionel said. He was sitting beside her. “It wasn't a pretty drawing. It was bark, and I needed it to survive the winter.”

Mrs. Mannerd was looking at him closely. This did not seem like one of his typical games. Rather than the usual mischief she normally saw in his eyes, there was
ferocity. And she almost could believe that he was a wild thing, protecting its family against the cruel darkness of night.

At bedtime, Lionel grabbed his blanket and slept huddled by Marybeth's bedroom door. If he had gone with Marybeth the night of the storm, none of this would have ever happened, and he would not let her down again.

Hours passed, and late into the night, the clatter of Mrs. Mannerd's sewing machine came to a stop.

When at last everyone in the house was asleep, Lionel was awoken by the creak of a floorboard and he opened his eyes.

Marybeth was halfway down the stairs, and from the moonlight in the window he could just see the outline of her white nightgown. He followed after her on all fours—he could be much quieter that way—and watched as she moved for the front door.

“Wait,” he whispered.

Marybeth spun around. For a second her eyes glowed blue. She hissed, startled.

Lionel knew better than to approach all at once. He knew that the blue creature did not yet trust him as well as Marybeth did.

“I was only going to say that you'll need your coat.” He rose to his feet and edged along with his back pressed against the wall, as far away from her as he could be. When he reached the tattered wool coat that hung by the door with all the other coats, he removed it and held it with his arm extended.

The blue creature eyed it warily. Lionel tossed it onto the floor at Marybeth's feet and hoped that the creature could be reasoned with.

He did not like to see those blue eyes on Marybeth's face. He did not like the unknowing stare they gave.

Eventually, it took the coat. It had no trouble putting it on and buttoning it, which Lionel found peculiar. What sort of animal was this blue creature that it knew how to dress itself? Several years ago, there was a feral cat that birthed a litter of kittens behind the shed where Mr. Mannerd used to make furniture. One of the older ones had knit a sweater for one of the more docile kittens, and when she had tried to put the sweater on the kitten, it nearly tore the nose from her face.

The creature turned the doorknob.

“You'll need shoes,” Lionel said. He was thinking of the gooseflesh on Marybeth's skin that afternoon; she could not tolerate the cold weather as well as he could.

The blue creature wriggled Marybeth's feet into her
boots and stepped out into the windy autumn air. Lionel followed several feet behind.

He followed the blue creature across the front lawn, down the long dirt driveway that led to the road, and then down the road itself. For as long as he could remember, Marybeth had been the one who followed him at a distance, never wanting to disturb the animals he sought as company. He wondered how she could stand it. It was horribly lonely watching her from afar; the creature didn't look over her shoulder at him.

He wondered if Marybeth had any say in where they were going.

After what Lionel guessed had been a mile, the creature in Marybeth's skin turned off the road and down a grassy hill. Lionel followed.

There was an old farmhouse in the distance. All its windows were dark. Marybeth would never trespass, and so it was strange to watch her stride so confidently past the house, through the yard, to the barn that didn't sound as though it contained any animals.

Lionel followed the blue creature into the barn, to where the moonlight no longer reached them. There were mice skittering behind the hay bales. Marybeth was a coward around mice and would have backed away, but the blue creature was undeterred. It made a bed for itself in the dirt and curled up there.

Lionel would have thought the blue creature had gone to sleep, but he could still see that foreign blue glow in Marybeth's opened eyes. The blue creature was watching him. Lionel crouched to the ground and held out his hand. Marybeth's nostrils flared as the blue creature sniffed him.

“What are you?” Lionel asked, more to himself than to the creature. The creature was not violent, but he didn't like that it had hidden Marybeth away somewhere. Her body was right in front of him, but she was as gone as she had been the other day when he found the lantern by the river.

“Will you come out?” he said. “Your coat was so lovely and blue. I'd like to see it again.”

The creature closed its eyes and slept.

Once Lionel was sure that the blue creature would not awaken, he took Marybeth's wrist and held his fingers to her pulse point. He felt Marybeth's heart throbbing gently, as the hearts of humans did. But beside that heartbeat he felt another that galloped like hooves against the hard ground.

All night Lionel sat beside Marybeth and the blue creature and kept watch. He was still awake when the rooster crowed and the morning light began to fill the cracks in the barn walls. He had been watching Marybeth's sleeping face, trying to determine which one of
them was in control. Sometimes her lip would pull back in a snarl, and always the eyebrows were drawn together. Even in sleep her face was troubled.

He shook Marybeth's shoulder. He knew that the blue creature was still wary of him and he didn't want to anger it, but Mrs. Mannerd would be awake soon and wondering where they'd gone.

Marybeth's body stirred. She cringed when the smell of the barn reached her. It was like mold and old manure. She pushed herself upright, blinking, and Lionel could see that she was Marybeth again. The cold hit her all at once, and her lip shook as she shivered. “Am I dreaming?”

“No,” Lionel said. “I followed you here. We have to go back now.” It was strange even to him that he should be the voice of reason, but Marybeth wasn't entirely herself these days and he didn't want Mrs. Mannerd locking her in the house.

Marybeth staggered to her feet and grasped a hay bale for support. She started walking for the door.

Lionel followed her.

“I remember this,” she said. “I thought I was dreaming.”

Her eyes were no longer blue. They were familiar, but still Lionel sensed there was something that wasn't right about the way she stared ahead.

She walked out into the chilly morning air. She stopped to look at the farmhouse. It was small and
colonial, with a tattered wooden fence whose paint was stripped down to mossy wood.

Lionel stared at it, too. But he did not understand what about it had captured Marybeth's attention. It was not very different from the red house where they lived, or any of the other houses they'd passed on their way here.

Marybeth didn't walk toward the house, though. Instead, she walked even farther from the main road, until she had led them to a river overrun with weeds.

“This is the river that runs all the way to our house,” she said. “I've seen it when Mrs. Mannerd takes us into town. I asked her once, and she said it ran clean through the entire state.” Her breath came out in little clouds. “The water must be freezing cold, but when I fell in, I didn't feel cold at all.”

“What did you feel?” Lionel asked.

“Frightened, at first,” Marybeth said. “It was strange. All in one second I thought, ‘I'm never going to be old like Mrs. Mannerd. The veins in my hands will never look like maps.'”

Lionel looked at Marybeth's hands. They were starting to turn blue from the cold. She knelt at the water's edge and looked inside. “I never thought about how dangerous water was before. It seems so pretty and harmless. How many other pretty things are dangerous, do you suppose?”

“Anything can be dangerous,” Lionel said. He turned his head at the sound of a door squeaking. Someone was coming out of the farmhouse. He grabbed Marybeth's arm and tried to pull her toward the trees so that they could hide.

She resisted. There was a flash of blue in her eyes, and when she hissed, it was so fierce that Lionel let go. He backed two steps away. If the creature was in charge, he didn't want it to run away in fear, nor did he want it to attack him.

But Marybeth came back immediately this time, and her face went pale. “Lionel? I—” She sobbed.

“Oh, no no no, don't cry,” Lionel said eagerly. “It's all right. I shouldn't have gotten so close. I won't do it again.” He was finding it difficult to do all this talking. He spoke to Marybeth more than he spoke to anyone, but even with her he didn't have to do it often. But now, with this untrusting creature under her skin, he would have to learn to use his words before he acted. “Someone is coming. We can hide in those trees.”

It was too late, though. A voice called from the top of the embankment, “What are you children doing by that river? Don't you know you could drown?”

CHAPTER

6

At the kitchen table in the farmhouse, Marybeth ate the scrambled eggs like she'd never seen food before. She even drank Lionel's milk, not that he minded. He was too busy trying to act human to be bothered with breakfast. He sat at the table and tried to find a place to rest his hands.

The old woman chuckled at this. “If you're going to keep coming back here, I'll have to get another cow for milk.”

This was the second time Marybeth had spent the night in that barn, and the second time the old woman made her breakfast. The old woman didn't seem to mind. Unlike Mrs. Mannerd, she did not have a house filled with children asking for things, and she had a great
many things to give. Her pantry was full, and it was a big house.

“Don't you want your eggs?” the old woman asked Lionel.

He shook his head.

“What's the matter, cat got your tongue?”

“No, thank you,” he said. The words stuck in his throat.

“He likes to eat things he finds outside,” Marybeth said. “There are berry bushes by our house.”

“You have to be careful with those,” the old woman said. “Lots of berries are poison.”

“Lionel always knows the difference.” She smiled across the table at him, and Lionel wished that the creature, whatever it was, would leave her. She was acting like herself this morning, but last night the animal had once again given Lionel cause to be afraid. He wasn't afraid that the animal would harm him, but rather that it would take over completely, and Marybeth would be gone.

“Eat up,” the old woman said. “I'll take you home. Your mother must be worried sick.”

“Yes, thank you,” Marybeth said. She didn't correct the old woman and say that Mrs. Mannerd wasn't her mother.

Marybeth did her best to look the part of a normal girl. She brushed her teeth and kept them pearly
white, and she braided her hair, and she said “please” and “thank you.” But normal girls had mothers, and there was nothing she could do to make up for that. All she could do was play along when people assumed that she had one.

The sound of footsteps caused Lionel to tense. His nostrils flared, and all at once he smelled something similar to the air inside the barn.

Across the table, Marybeth raised her head. Her pupils dilated, like an animal that had just been startled. Lionel watched her. Even when the creature wasn't in charge, she was becoming less like a girl and more like a wild thing herself.

The footsteps came down the stairs, which groaned and creaked as though someone were trying to pry off their boards. Marybeth shrank in her chair. She set down her fork and hid her hands under the table.

When the man entered the kitchen, Marybeth's tension didn't ease up, even though the man looked perfectly ordinary. He wore pinstriped pajamas and had messy hair. He saw Lionel and Marybeth at the table, and he said, “What's this?”

“I've found children in the barn again,” the old woman said. “Two of them this time.”

“Well, you can't keep them,” the man said. “Take them back.”

“I know that,” the old woman said. She looked at Lionel and Marybeth and said, “This is my son, Reginald. He forgets his manners in the mornings.”

Marybeth stared at her plate. Her appetite was gone.

“Are you all done?” the old woman said. “Come on, then, I'll give you a lift back home. That is, if you remember where it is this time.”

There was a low growl in Marybeth's throat, like the one she'd given before she lunged on the hyena boy, but only Lionel heard it.

“I remember where we live,” he said.

Marybeth stood, and Lionel followed her at a close distance. Something was troubling her and he would have liked to hold her hand, but he was afraid of summoning the blue creature again. And he couldn't ask her what was the matter, not with the old woman around.