The Short Life of Sparrows (27 page)

“I’m completely serious. A stag. She was walking him past the shed this morning. Told me all about how one of the Elders found it near the front wall with a lame leg. Well, she doctored him up with a chant, but not before she used some sedation spell. She kept maintaining that I scratch his chin and call him Douglas. The thing actually walks like it’s marching in a formal procession. She has a red cape on him and some stupid top hat.”

As soon as I say
top hat
, Calli and Daphne are shoving each other to be the first one out the door. Lil drops the spoon in the pot. “You’ll keep an eye on this? I have to see this foolishness.”

“Yep,” I reply, lifting the spoon to taste the soup.

Mildred stays seated, and I scrunch my forehead. “Not interested in seeing deer in costume, huh?”

She chuckles. “Oh, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of opportunities to see her new pet’s wardrobe. Poor thing. I just have to remind myself that any animal in Odella’s charge will never want for food. You do know that she only uses the sedation spell until they trust her right? And then she lifts it. That pig followed her around willingly, because it knew she’d give it tarts.”

Tapping her fingers on her glass, I can feel that Mildred wants to say something. She begins to, and then pauses with her mouth open before closing it again. “Isaiah?”

“Hmm?” I turn the soup over so it doesn’t gather a thick skin on the top.

“Thank you.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. If I took up painting, I’d make a mess too.”

“No. Not about my hair. I mean—about staying through the summer. For being patient with all of us. Daphne and Calli really have enjoyed their time with you. I can tell. Daphne even hums when she’s baking. I’ve never seen her like that before. And Calli. Well, I love her, but she’s just such a temperamental girl sometimes. She really has calmed down the past few months, and I think it’s because you can make her laugh where the rest of us seem to rile her further. Even Lil. She’s lighter somehow. Not having to be embarrassed about the front of her house anymore means more to her than she’ll probably ever admit to you.”

I’m not really stirring anymore. I’m pretending to mix it. Swallowing hard, I rearrange what I’m sure is an expression that will make this worse—should Mildred see it. “I’m glad.”

She gets up from her chair, peering out of the orange curtains. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but you don’t gossip like the girls do. Heaven knows I tire of keeping it to myself. I’ve told Lil I don’t believe in secrets. Not one bit. Either they ruin us from without or from within. You wouldn’t tell anyone
here
if I shared it, would you? Eighteen years of holding it in, it isn’t good for the nerves.”

“What is it?” I’m expecting another story like the one Calli told me about Lil doing a headstand with her undergarments showing. Lil detests any story about her that hints that she’s fun.

“Oh,” Mildred goes on, “I think another reason why Lil’s been so relaxed this summer is because you remind her of what her own boy might be like. The newborn she sent away from the coven right before everything happened with Calli’s mother, Eva. Now my Nightblood was always the gentleman, but Lil’s—he turned out to be something altogether. So she convinced him the baby was stillborn. She seemed to know he wasn’t the kind of man who could be bothered to say a goodbye to something so weak. She did a hard thing. The hardest. Probably saved that sweet babe from ever becoming like his wretched father though. Heaven knows those young Nightbloods all want to make their fathers proud the moment they come to collect them.”

The chill spreads from my back to my arms. A heavy nausea punches through my stomach.
I can see the job advertisement stuck to my boot
. The paper that seemed oddly meant for me. How I was the only one who showed up to inquire about the work. The look on Lil’s face when she first saw me.

“Have I said too much?” she exclaims. “Oh dear, I didn’t mean to burden you with that. I have terrible judgment. I’m sorry, it’s just that I felt the pressure of holding that in all this time. I thought—”

“Don’t be sorry.” I wipe my hands on the cloth next to the potatoes. “I wouldn’t have anybody around here to tell.” There’s no convincing smile on my lips. Scratching my eyebrow, I tell myself, “
You’re fine. Don’t react to this. Walk out of here calmly.”

I hand her the spoon. “I apologize. Drank too much lemonade. Could you watch the soup? I need to excuse myself.”

“Oh of course,” she says, her eyes wide and her mouth turned down. “You won’t tell Calli or Daphne, right? It’s hard enough on Lil that she felt she had to do it. I don’t think Calli has the sensitivity to handle this sort of news. And Lil wouldn’t want her to think that she only took her in because she was mourning her own loss. She really does love Calli as her own.”

My head moves in the form of a nod, but it might as well be detached from my body. I’m seeing everything blur in front of me as I step from the porch. Calli and Daphne come running through the white gate. They swing it too hard, forgetting to go easy on the new hinges I fashioned. I’m clamping downward with my teeth until I taste metal on my tongue. Lil strides in after them, her face rosy from laughing.

I must show it in how I freeze in place. My eyes hang on hers, clinging like a pathetic, damp shirt to a clothesline. The sweat on my face and palms is dense. There’s no controlling the hammering in my head.  I kick the water bucket at a porch post. The blow of it meeting with the rail is loud. It bounces down a stair, the cracked pail rolling onto its side to dribble the remaining contents.

“Whoa there,” Calli says, grabbing a hold of Daphne. “What’s with you?”

Daphne questions me with her stare, but I can’t even bring myself to worry about easing her concern right now. Two houses down, one of the Seers is taking her time to pick roses—clearly wanting to know why the Ordinary has lost it.

Lil watches me. “You girls get inside and finish up the dinner. I’ll be in soon.” Her shoulders say it for me.
There is no secret, not anymore
. “Mildred doesn’t think a bit.” She whispers it, her eyes closing.

“The shirts?” I ask, pinching the front of my clothes. “The ointment for my arms and back? Bringing my breakfast to me every morning before I can get out of bed? Couldn’t you just say it? I didn’t need you to give me anything. I’ve made it so far, without anyone’s help. Couldn’t you just say I’m sorry you’ve been on your own all of this time? I’m sorry I actually believed Ordinaries would feed and care for you? I’m sorry your father was that terrible, and I was empty-headed enough to get caught up with him?”

The tears trickle down her face. Every crease around her features contorts. Lil’s hair catches the sun as she tips her head. “There is no way to say sorry for it. I did what I thought I had to do. Nothing I say to you now will make it any different.”

With my hands at my hips and every step sounding more definite than the last, I walk for her. She uses her apron to blot her face, before she returns my gaze. I’m a foot taller than her, at least. Is he this tall? She looks nothing like me. Not the hair, not the eyes, not the nose. Do I look like a younger version of him? Whoever this flimsy pretense of a man is? I couldn’t give a damn about how she has to look up at me, I decide. I’ve needed somewhere to put all of my anger—every ounce of writhing, acidic bitterness. It’s the kind of aching hurt that doesn’t even need words. Through our silence, I hope she feels every bit of it.

“Yell if you must. I certainly deserve it.”

My snicker is useless, because my eyes water anyway. “I can forgive you for sending me away. I can forget all of the years, the dank smell of a poorhouse when the July heat fills it. Hell, I can act as if I didn’t curl up in a ball every night until I was fourteen—thinking about where you were and if you ever thought about me. But this entire summer? You lying and asking me to make my mark on a contract? Did you for one second think about telling the truth? About claiming me?”

“If I had,” she says, “you wouldn’t want to leave when the summer ended. I only needed to learn your name. To see you all grown with my own eyes. I thought it might help me feel that I’d made the right decision. I’m sorry for every second of pain you’ve been in, but I’m not sorry for the choice I made. You’re not meant for this place. No matter how at ease you are with Calli or Daphne. Even with coven blood in your veins, you’re better than all of this. And I knew I couldn’t give you what you deserved from the moment I heard I’d had a boy. I couldn’t allow myself to name you even as I wrapped you in my arms.”

My throat hardens. I had an entire image of her in my head—this curly haired, dark-eyed woman who couldn’t be made to think outside of herself. After eighteen years of hating her, she has a different face. She isn’t even the thoughtless, selfish woman I’d imagined. She loves me—did love me— to send me away. I wonder though, if I’d stayed, would I really be like
them
? Would I have really been as smug as Rowe, as deviant and depraved as the lot of them? Or is there a chance that I’d still be me, that I could have spent every summer by the river with Calli and Daphne … I want to believe that I would have been strong enough to not be molded by the darkness and the magic. I want to tell Lil she was wrong to do it—to deliver me from this broken, wicked pit of a place. I’m not ready to absorb it, because I know what kind of love it took for her to do so—the bravest kind. That makes me furious too.

She squeezes my arm, and then she straightens her apron. “I guess eventually our secrets claim us though. You know the truth now, and you’ll do with it as you choose. The summer is almost over. I won’t ask you to go.” Her voice breaks, the choking in her throat as she pushes her way around me. “But please, don’t think I’ll ever ask you to stay either.”

I almost turn to the shed, but I stop. I’m surveying the reinforced fence, the new railing, the high pile of wood—
I did all of this with my hands
. I wish I could laugh about it—how I could have made it all in one day, had I known I had that power all along.

A hazy pink settles in the evening dusk. The front of the house is a warm shade of honey with the last of the sun hitting it. I trudge up to the bench I made. It’s small and simple, but it goes nicely beside all of Rowe’s blasted flowers. Glancing at the black blister that’s crusted on my thumb from the hammer, I picture myself chanting the rickety house into something with three times the rooms, maybe a roof with a red finish and a walkway more shiny than any other Seer’s entrance.

No
. Lil is right. I’d just be another Lucas, another gloating warlock with an over-inflated sense of pride—pursuing a random girl with no intention of being true to her. I can’t walk up that mountainside and proclaim that I want to be one of them. I’d be lying. It’s in this moment that I feel it. I know it’s my last night with Daphne. I’ll kiss her and hold her, and hopefully she’ll know that I meant it. Tomorrow morning will be the last time I eat breakfast with Calli or joke about what the Coven Mistresses are up to. It’ll be the final time that I speak to my mother.
One
more night, and I’m gone.

34

ISAIAH

I
wait above the riverbed at the edge of the field, listening to the water rush and whistle. My bag is packed and ready. I left it by the woodshed, stuffed to the top with things that don’t make it any easier to leave—things like the shirts Lil made for me and the desserts that Daphne cooked for me yesterday. I even took a short walk before sundown to where Calli and I buried the birds. The urge to tell my closest friend that I’m going was a fleeting impulse, because I don’t doubt that Calli would block the gated wall with her arms and legs until she had me convinced to stay. She had a confused expression when I hugged her after dinner, but I told her it was because the salt and thyme she sneaked into the soup made it even better.

I choose this way—to go without any kind of a scene, to forgo seeing the hurt and disappointment on Calli’s or Daphne’s faces. My collar is turned up to keep the wind off my neck. The weather will change soon, and I’m curious what this strange and magical place will look like under a sheet of snow. I pace behind a cluster of trees, feeling as if every minute she doesn’t show is more definite proof she won’t come at all. The agitation needles at me, because I can’t be sure if Daphne will be able to get away tonight. It’s not as if she even knows this is our last chance.

A rustling comes from the grass, and I hate myself for the giant smile she has as she runs through the weeds with the lantern bobbing in her hand. I hung my own lantern from a branch as a signal, and her excitement destroys me as she hurries toward it with a dark quilt at her shoulders. As soon as her lantern is planted on the ground, her lips steal mine. I take her kiss, returning it with a far more desperate one.

“I thought my mother would never go to sleep.” She laughs, her hands already working at the buttons on my shirt.

“No.” I clutch her hands, because we can’t.
Not that
. I couldn’t go if we did.

Daphne’s mouth falls, and her forehead curves. “You don’t need to be worried about me seeing them. I know about the scars, Isaiah. Calli tried to convince another Seer last Tuesday to curse the people who used to hit you. She was even going to cut her red hair short just to amuse them in exchange for the curse. I talked her out of it. Told her I’d tell Lil.”

“It’s not about the marks on my back.”

The breeze stirs her hair, and she clenches the edges of the quilt to her chest. “What is it then? If you trust me, why are you suddenly looking at me like I’m a stranger? I thought we both wanted this.”

I’m scrambling for a lie that will appease her, but the paling color of her cheeks says it’s too late. “You’re not even staying until the snow, are you?” Her arms close further around her middle as I say nothing. Turning from the lamplight, I direct my line of sight to the field—to the darkness casting the sky in indigo. I look upon the ghostly mountain where the Nightbloods must be assembled, and I study the barely discernable skeletons of the Seers’ houses. Daphne doesn’t push me for an explanation, which rips at me.
Coward.