Where Bluebirds Fly (17 page)

“What time be this?”

“The twenty-first century.”

I nod but it still feels too big an idea to fit inside my head.

I open my eyes and stare at my surroundings in a whole new way. Contraptions abound, the likes of which I’ve never imagined, let alone seen. How odd, to see creations for which I have no name. I feel like Adam.
 

“This year is black.”

“Excuse me?” He stops pacing and his blue eyes instantly flick to my face, intense.

“Nothing.”

He quickly drops beside me on the bed. His hand cradles mine, and the warmth of it cuts through the panic, quieting the antics of my heart. My headache is easing.

The hornets howl; they do not like him.
His mere presence dulls them to a low hum.

“No, it’s all right. You don’t have to be afraid with me. I won’t let anyone or anything harm you.”

His sincere eyes make me want to blurt out every secret I’ve ever kept.
My traitorous breath hitches again. I close my eyes, too cowardly to watch his judgment.

“I am…different.” I peek up to evaluate his expression.

“You’ve come to the right place, then.”

My eyebrow rises with the question forming on my lips. “T-Truman?”

“Please, don’t act so hesitant. I’ve already admitted I can’t keep my mind off you. Pathetically so. I’m different, too.”

His face turns rapturous—like I’ve given him with the most perfect gift he’s ever seen.
 

“I, I—” he stutters. His eyes cloud with his own protective sheen. He winces. “People emit colors for me, and their names have tastes, for that matter. You, for instance...are now the most beautiful shade of purple.”

I lean over, looking past him to a looking glass. My own quizzical expression stares back. His gaze follows mine, and his face flushes.

“No, only
I
can see it. It seems to be tied to people’s personalities. Almost like…an anchor to their souls? Who they
really
are?”

“Oh,” I breathe. “Really?”
 
How could he know these things? My mind asks a question, I don’t want answered. Could he be in league with the dark one?

His expression shifts back to concern. “I can feel your fear, right now. I swear, it’s scientific, nothing supernatural. You’re outlined in red, around the purple now. And the squint of your eyes, the doubtful slant of your mouth…well they scream fear. I am positive.”

“Supernatural?”

“I’m not a witch or anything. Also, I can just look at people’s expressions, and decipher them—tell when they’re lying. It’s automatic.”

“Oh, all right. I…” I hesitate. I have never admitted my abnormality to another, save my family. “See days, months, letters—in color.”

“Yes! I’ve studied it! Color-grapheme synesthesia. Why that’s the most common kind. The statistics say one in every two-hundred people have a form of it.”

“What? It has a name? Other people have it too?”

“Most definitely. I find it fascinating.”

Tears of relief spring up and trail down my cheeks. A reluctant hope clogs my heart, making it skip a beat.

“They all proclaimed me a witch. They would’ve
killed me.
And you say it be…normal?”

“For you, yes.”

Anger consumes hope. I grasp a handful of my hair and shake it at him. “And the way I look? My eyes, do you have the answer for them, as well?”

“It has a big name, too. Heterochromia. But also normal—for you. I can show pictures of others on the internet.”

“The w-what?”

Sobs break the encrusted façade around my heart. Years of silence, of suppressing every fear, every thought—relief busts it open, shattering in my chest.

His warm, muscled arms pull me into his embrace. I try to lose myself in his scent. Try not to think. He smells so clean, compared to other men.
 

But I’ve never been this close before, to anyone.

My voice is muffled into his shirt. “You said people’s names have tastes. What do I taste like?” I lift my eyes to take in his face, embarrassment heating my cheeks.

His cheeks redden in return. I almost laugh.

Dueling embarrassments.

“Like the snow. Pure and precise and…invigorating.” A smile parts his lips. I feel the unfamiliar longing inside me. His eyes widen slightly as if he senses it, and he pulls me tighter in his arms.
 

He slowly bends his head toward me and his lips graze mine-softly at first, then they move furiously, with crushing swipes.

I open my mouth and close my eyes, savoring the feeling. A hot flush rushes up my neck and I grasp the back of his hair in both my hands.

I must not. I must not.

But I cannot stop. I’ve waited so long...to have something to love.

He pulls back abruptly, his face suddenly serious with some unspoken realization.

“I will help you get back to Salem. To find your brother, but only if I can come with you.”

* * *

John jerked awake. Something had passed over his leg. He shivered.

I shall not look.

His mind paraded an endless stream of pictures. Pictures of comfort—his talisman against the continuous, almost inhuman, moans of the accused.

He’d found a piece of shale within reach of his bars. So far, one half of his coffin cell was scrawled in memories.

One wall housed his boyhood home, the sprawling countryside in Maine, where life was happy, before his parents’ death. He barely remembered it now; just random images, conjured from the back of his mind.
 

On the other side, he sketched a quiet pond near the Parris household. He and Verity’s secret meeting place.

“John, son. It’s time to go. Your trial be today.”

Constable Corwin opened the cell. John’s legs quivered as he tried to stand. He clutched uselessly at the bars as they buckled. Corwin and the boy caught him beneath his arms, dragging him toward the light.

Pangs of searing pain shot through his thighs with each step.

“Open the door!” Corwin called into the other room.

As they entered the Ordinary, and the makeshift courtroom, he felt the heat of a hundred eyes judging him. A shudder, borne of their scorn, slid down his spine.

His eyes slid across their faces and he sucked in the musty air, trying to fill his lungs.

 
His mind screamed retreat, to pull inside, like a turtle to its shell.

But inside, Verity’s voice warned, “You must defend yourself John. Show no fear.”

A choked sob escaped, nonetheless.

Hands seated him roughly on a bench, where the accused were queued in the order of their hearings. Judge Hathorne pounded his gavel for attention.

“Candy, slave of Mrs. Hawkes. You are hereby accused of witchcraft. How do you plead?”

“Candy no witch in her country. Candy’s mother no witch. Candy no witch Barbados. This country, mistress, give Candy witch.”**

“So your mistress made you a witch in this country?”

“Yes, Mistress bring Candy ink, book and make Candy sign.” The woman pretended to scribble an imaginary pen.

“Your spectral self is accused of attacking Mary Walcott and Anne Putnam, Jr.”

John scoffed to the woman beside him, “Is there any afflicted who has
not
attacked Anne?”
 

Constable Corwin shot him a glare, and he pressed his lips together.

“How did you afflict these women?” Hathorne prompted.

“If Candy allowed, she will fetch the items.”

Candy left the courtroom, flanked on either side by two men. Within minutes, she returned with an armful of belongings. In one hand was a handkerchief, which circled a piece of cheese and a piece of grass and was knotted in the middle. And in the other, she grasped two knotted rags.

Her feet no more than crossed the threshold when Mary Warren and Abigail and Deliverance Hobbs dropped to the ground, their bodies convulsing. The sound of Deliverance’s head bouncing up and down off the floor reminded John of smashing pumpkins.

Mary’s eyes filled with terror as they locked with Candy’s. “She and her mistress and the man in black, they pinch us with the rags!”

Judge Hathorne screamed, “Remove those from her immediately.” His gaze never left the spectacle of the women, who now shuddered and flipped like suffocating fishes.

Removing the items from Candy produced no relief. Abigail Hobbs screamed in pain and grasped her leg as if bitten.

Hawthorne intervened once again. “Untie the knots; they must be the voodoo items. A knot for each of their souls.”

Corwin hurried over and untied the knots, looking expectantly at the writhing trio.

“No good, sir,” Corwin said.

Deliverance screamed, “Mercy, please sir!” Her head twisted and angled to the right as if slapped.

“Candy, eat the grass!” he commanded.

Candy looked as mortified as the witnesses. She shuffled over and stuffed the piece of grass into her mouth. She chewed it quickly and opened her mouth, like a child, to show she had swallowed it.

Mary’s fit reached apoplectic proportions. Her form went tombstone-rigid, and her eyes rolling back to show the whites.

John could scarcely breathe. The only time he’d seen such violent fits was when his father had shot a dog infected with the distemper.
 

His desperate mind yearned for Verity, and he imagined her steadying hand on his shoulder. He felt vibration in his throat and realized he was moaning.

Hathorne screamed, “Burn the rags, Corwin!”

Constable Corwin hurried outside and returned, brandishing a foot warmer. He shoved one of the rags inside and quickly lit it. The dry piece of fabric blazed orange in the center of the dusky room.
 

Every soul held its breath. Would the rag’s destruction halt the chaos?
 

Deliverance’s wail fractured the silence. Her hands patted all over her chest, as if extinguishing flames. “It burns us! AHHHHH!”

Hathorne’s face was now visibly flushed despite the dim light. “Douse it man!”

Corwin bolted outside, returning with a bucketful of water. Half of it sloshed on the floor as he skidded to a stop in front of the burning heap.
 

As the arc of water poured onto the flame, strangled choking sounds emitted from all three women.
 

Abigail managed a whisper. “You be drowning us!”

John’s hands flew to his eyes. He slipped into his head, reveling in the pictures there, willing his soul to
be
there.

The room faded to a distorted reality, as if underwater. He knew his eyes were unfocused and far away. Verity had begged him to never escape, described how his face frightened her when he escaped. “Like a house abandoned,” she’d whispered.

He cared not.
 

Finally, a woman stood across the room, her hand clutching at her heart. Mrs. Hawkes was barely heard over the din of the hapless trio on the floor. “I confess, Candy and I are guilty.”

The women’s writhing halted immediately and they lay still as the stones on the floor.

In a far off voice, he heard Hathorne say, “Return the other prisoners. This is enough devilry for one day.”

John felt hands grasp both his arms.
 

He did not struggle as they hauled him back toward the witch-dungeon.

**Author’s Note: part of dialogue was from actual Salem transcripts.

* * *

Chapter 15

I rub the soft dress betwixt my fingers, wondering at its texture. I gaze at the young woman in the full-length mirror; unconvinced it is truly my face which stares back.

Sunshine peers over my shoulder, watching me with a tender expression. She smooths my shoulders and steps back. “Well, it seems to fit well. Will that be okay?”
 

The dress is charcoal gray and I fidget as I try in vain to pull it down. My knees poke out the bottom, making me self-conscious.

At home, to show one’s
ankles
be scandalous. The top bodice is tight and gathered, culminating in what they call a ‘turtleneck’. My dark red ringlets are a bright contrast lying against it. Sunshine has completed my
‘make-up’
as she calls it, and one eyebrow rises in evaluation. She nods, admiring her handiwork.

“I never had a little sister,” she quips, arranging my hair behind me.

The result is remarkable. I pivot from side to side, trying to reassure myself I am
truly
the reflection. I look as beautiful as any of the gentry back home.
 
If I wore a ball gown, I would be indistinguishable from the classes I’ve served.

“Well, say something. Your eyes look fantastic with that color of eye shadow. They totally pop.”