The Short Life of Sparrows (12 page)

You’d think that keeping to my work all day would be enough to breeze through this summer unnoticed
. But no.  I’ve had to attend a funeral for a bunch of stiff birds, the surprise of elderly Seers rattling my bed, been gifted a less than appealing chunk of an animal’s hindquarters, and now I have a very grim warlock looking at me like he might throttle me if I don’t give him the expected answer. “Sure.”

He pats my shoulder, making room for me to pass him. His wide hand tightens on me for a moment. “It’s for the best. I assure you. Everything I do is to make sure our Seers are safe and well. Especially Callista. Lil and I have to look after her, what with her mother not being able to do so.”

“I’ve got a lot to do,” I say, quirking an eyebrow. “If you’ll excuse me.”
Callista?
I suppress the impulse to laugh, even as I rush to get outside. It doesn’t fit her at all, and I can picture the bitter face she’d pull at being called something so delicate and proper. There’s a part of me that feels ashamed—for hearing such an intimate discussion about her, without her being informed of it.

I have no desire to be a party to the murky dealings of this place. Being too curious about any of this coven’s methods or traditions, well, it sends a queer shiver like that of a racing spider up my back.  Whatever mess this Awakening is, and however Rowe complicates things, all I can do is be vigilant in her behalf. Not that I’d have any idea about Murdoch’s real purposes, but Lil is the one who patches Calli’s dresses—the one who has given her a home and helps to braid her hair.

Standing on the porch, I feel a swelling of guilt as Calli ties her horse to the corner of the fence. Murdoch descends the steps without acknowledging her, and Calli turns her back to her horse, not bothering to say hello either. Everything about it feels impending and ominous. I’m just going to hope Murdoch and Lil know what they’re doing, and that they’re really doing it to protect her.

15

CALLI

F
ireflies float, flashing tiny specks of gold in the dark. There’s no breeze, and the smell of rampant wildflower rises from the green as we cross the field. The melted stub of a candle sends pale waves of light through the glass of the slanted shed. It’s as if he’s been waiting for us to tap on the door, and Daphne and I exchange an amused smile over it. Just as we approach the packed pathway to the front, Isaiah slips out of the shed, shrugging his coat on as he closes the door.

“Where are we going tonight?” he asks, taking the lantern from Daphne. It doesn’t escape me when he keeps glancing sideways at Daphne’s dress. The elaborate blue layers of her skirt rival the simple, soupy brown dress I hurried to throw on over my nightgown. The two of them look like they’ve polished their hair for the event of the year, while mine lies in a lopsided braid to get it out of my face.

Jerking my head toward the tree line, I turn right without waiting for agreement. “Let’s go to the tree house, because if I get another mud stain from sitting in the grass, Lil will figure it out.”

“We’re not climbing up there in the dark,” Daphne begs.

“It’s not my fault you both dressed like you’re being presented to a king,” I say, stepping carefully through the tall grass. “Last night I spotted some of the Coven Mistresses walking around the village after midnight, like fortress guards. So unless you want to explain it to Mildred, I think we should stay out of sight. Besides, I stashed something up there that I was going to show you.”

She sighs, gathering her skirt up from the dewy grass. “Okay, I’m in. What is it?”

“Oh,” I tease, pursing my lips. I shrug, failing to stop a smile from stealing into my cheeks. “It’s nothing but the diary of the one and only May Cressle. I found it near the well yesterday.”

She slaps my arm, her jaw falling downward. “No,” she exclaims.

Isaiah rolls his eyes as he tries to keep up with us. “I don’t know who this May is, but isn’t it a little childish to read someone’s private thoughts?”

I dip my chin in response, but the craftiness of securing such a treasure is too plainly displayed on my face. “Yes, noble sir. It’s most childish. And I plan to read every page aloud, doing my very best to impersonate a squealing hog. May Cressle is always gloating about Mildred’s and Lil’s houses being the ugliest houses in the coven. She thinks it’s so funny that we won’t use magic to repair everything. I
know
it was her that left pig shit on our porches last spring. She deludes herself into believing that because she knows her father’s last name that she’s somehow more sophisticated than the rest of us.”

Daphne sniffs, like she’s been assaulted by a putrid odor. “Even though Jacob Cressle has probably fathered half of the coven.”

We hike into the stiffening blackness of the pines, weaving through the creaking woods along the base of the sloped mountain. Insects whistle in the tree leaves, and twigs click as they snap under the heels of my boots. The lantern light dyes the shrubs and tree trunks a tawny shade as we stop below the old, distorted tree.

Daphne’s lips tighten as she takes hold of the lowest rung on the tree trunk. “It’s true,” she says, tilting toward him. “Calli is right. May is spiteful and a complete gossip. If she’d found anyone’s diary, she’d read it in the daylight for everyone to hear.” Gripping the bolted scraps of wood, she clings to each one as she musters her way up to the crude platform. He reaches upward, handing the lantern to her as she bends for it.

It isn’t necessarily a formal tree house by the look of it. Surveying our abandoned hiding place, I can’t help but wonder how either Daphne or I escaped a broken arm while piecing it together. I’ve never been instructed in building anything—the sloppy, haphazard arrangement of the boards and nails shows it. Still, I have an attachment and swelling pride about it as I note the long, shredded sheet tied in the branches for a makeshift curtain. For two Seers who’ve always been the last to be included in anything, it was a bit of consolation to have a place to go that was all our own. I wait for Isaiah to follow her, but he stands aside for me.

“You first,” he says, holding out his hand to me like he did for Daphne.

“Thank you, but I can do it.”

The gesture is a sweet one, but I’m certainly capable of scaling a tree without help. One of the boards in the ladder is loose when I reach for it, and so I stretch my arm up to take hold of the next. I swear under my breath as my sleeve snags on a patch of rough bark. Daphne crouches, muttering as she untangles the fabric of my sleeve from where it is stuck. “If you tear another dress, Lil is going to ask more questions than if she found mud on it.”

Climbing up onto the groaning platform, I dust myself off and scour the shadowed place for where I tossed it. Daphne waves the leather bound book at me as Isaiah’s face surfaces. I tear it from her, holding it above my shoulder. “I found it, and I intend to be the first to read it.”

He takes a seat right beside Daphne, brushing her arm as he sits.
I could comment on how there’s plenty of room to sprawl out
. But I don’t, because admittedly it’s endearing the way she blushes and fixes her skirt as he does so. The crumbled remains of a dried dandelion fall from the journal when I open it.

Thumbing through the weathered pages, I make snoring noises. “She’s unbelievably boring, actually. An entry about her hair ribbons.” I turn another page. “There’s one where she rambles about learning to pick up her brush by chanting. Another one about stirring her oatmeal without touching it. Someone crown her Witch Extraordinaire.” My eyes skim over the cursive scribbles, until I stop on a wrinkled page with bent corners, as if it’s been reread many times.

“Oh,” I grin, my eyes widening with the shock of the word
naked
. I clear my throat, sitting up a little taller as I pause to add theatrical emphasis. “
I felt like a goddess as his kisses dipped over my bare shoulders. He caressed my cheek when he saw that I was shivering from the cold of the rocky dirt
—” I stop, lowering the book to my lap. “She even allows herself to be bedded on the ground like a pig. So much for being more refined than the likes of us.
I didn’t care that we were so near the Willow Circle, because I was so overcome by his gorgeous eyes and his body as he unfastened his clothes
—”

A laugh bursts from Daphne’s mouth, but Isaiah shakes his head in disapproval. “Girls are so mean. You all should learn to throw a punch—get over the frustration and move on to something else. You’d feel better, and then you wouldn’t have the need to hiss about each other.”

“Sssh,” I scold, resuming my high-pitched impersonation of May. “
He’s even more beautiful than I thought he’d be. I’ve heard a few of the girls whisper about the remarkable size of his
—“”

“Gross,” Isaiah interrupts. “I’m going to lose the stew I ate at dinner.”

“Don’t worry,” I continue, giggling over the very uncreative use of words like
big
and
throbbing
. “I’ll gloss over the worst parts—to shield your innocence.”

“
He seemed reluctant when I moaned into his ear
.
But the
more we kissed, the more eager we both became about continuing our dalliance
. Dalliance? Oh please. She cannot be serious, using that word. Squirrels mate in the brush like this. I suppose animals are not merely caught up in a surge of hormones. Next time I see two cows bellowing, I’m going to call it a
dalliance
.”

Daphne falls into a mess of laughter, hiding her teary eyes as she wraps her arms to her knees. Even Isaiah laughs, but he shakes his head over. “Calli, you are terrible.
I
am terrible for listening to this.”

I wrinkle an eyebrow at his poorly attempted piety. Scooting into the bowing curve of a large branch, I recline back before bringing the book up again. “
I cried out loudly as I watched the pulsing of his arms and chest above me
,” I quote, stopping for a moment to grunt like a sow. Reading the next few lines in silence, I can’t bring myself to say the rest of it.

“I’m going to skip ahead, before this gets any more tragic.” Turning through the following ten pages, I almost start to feel sorry for May. Every entry is a poem or an absorbed contemplation about this unnamed man. It’s painfully obvious that she didn’t realize how casual and typically shallow the encounter with this Nightblood was the further I read.

“Is that it?” Daphne asks, as I hesitate to mock any more of this girl’s guarded secrets. Nearly closing the diary, I remember scrubbing mounds of manure off our front steps. I think about the passing look of humiliation on Lil’s face, as she got on her hands and knees to help me wash it. Then there was May Cressle tittering and watching us do it as the flies and stink gathered that morning—all that time, her knowing full well that I couldn’t knock her on her rump with any kind of chant. My arms grew sore quickly as we hurried over to clean Mildred’s porch too—neither Lil nor I allowing May and her friends the satisfaction of Mildred’s sobs. My temporary sympathy for May Cressle is suddenly like water being poured into a bucket with no bottom to it. I lift her diary to read more.

“
He’s done nothing more than nod a polite hello at me the last three months. When he came to Elsa’s Awakening tonight, I cornered him about it. The duplicitous snake said that he’d been mistaken to carry on with me. That he’d been wrong to do so. Hopefully, I slapped him hard enough to let him know his apology wasn’t accepted. I really hate …”

My face burns, and I can’t really explain why I’m startled by the next part. It isn’t a shocking revelation. No. I’ve been aware of his lack of decency all along. Isaiah and Daphne watch me as I break from finishing, and I’m forced to swallow and recite it. Although I can’t make myself continue with the same enthusiasm or humor. I don’t ponder whether May’s dreams were filled with him too before it happened. It seems too apparent that they were. I’m just a pawn to Rowe, to him I must seem as clueless as May. “
I really hate
…
Rowe. If I thought I could curse him without him knowing it, I would. I should have believed everything I heard about him. He really is the worst of them all.
” I keep the page marked with my finger, but I don’t want to read anymore.

Daphne saves me from the strange unease that fills me. “Well, he would do something like that. If she isn’t bright enough to recognize that Rowe is only about himself—that most Nightbloods behave that way—that’s her problem.”

Closing the diary, I stand up. “No. Even the likes of May Cressle shouldn’t be treated that way. I’ll say one thing. The nightmares I have are less repulsive than reading about Rowe disrobed and mounting someone. Or May all sweaty and braying like a mule. This isn’t any fun. I think I’m ready to go home. Are you two coming?”

They share a reluctant silence, but I wait on them until Isaiah finally pulls Daphne to her feet. They say nothing when I pitch the book into the night. We walk back, all left alone with our own thoughts. He trails last, trudging behind us girls as we reach Mildred’s. “Goodnight,” I call out quietly, pushing my unlatched window panes apart. She waves, and he nods as he keeps his hands to his coat pockets. I pull off my boots before I hoist myself up into the ledge—avoiding any thuds that would bring Lil down the hall. As I close the panes, I stop in the shadow of my room. The lantern light doesn’t move from the narrow space between our two houses, and I consider that I’ve been nosy enough for one night. Peering from the corner edge of the glass, I look out at the two of them propped against her window.

All I can discern from a quick glance is the back of Isaiah as he gives her a chaste and reserved kiss goodnight. I surrender my intention to pry, backing away with a smile on my face.

After unbuttoning my clothes, I unroll my stockings and ball them up. I have to bite my tongue to stop the relieved laughter from coming. My happiness solidifies as I declare to myself that my Awakening was in fact a lie.
It can’t happen now. It just can’t
. Whatever the scene was that I saw on my birthday—it isn’t real. Not when Isaiah only has eyes for Daphne. I haven’t chanted anything, and yet I’m free of it.