Sasha never got around to preparing the steamboat for the Pecan Ball, but it sits on the river like a paper lantern. A warm golden glow emanates from the deck lights, framing the guests with soft auras. She parks in the grassy field that acts as an overflow lot. They can hear a jazz band tuning up on deck as they wait to board.
Autumn is close beside her, and there’s another thrill low in her stomach that she’s actually managed to speak finally. Standing there in line, she wishes fervently that they could just be alone, actually, with none of their neighbors around to fog the clear window of this joy. She glances over at Autumn.
By and large, she’s unchanged: her swept-up hair is a little messy, she has that same impish grin, the same unladylike mannerisms. She’s still Sasha’s Pip, who wakes her up by pouncing on her bed and tickling her, and borrows Sasha’s hands for thumbprint cookies. Only now, Sasha knows what Autumn feels like, skin to bare skin. What she looks like with nothing between them but moonlight. She knows what it’s like to kiss her, slow, lazy, and sated while water hushes by underneath their tree house.
“Guess I’m not on duty tonight,” Sasha notices, nodding at Tim, one of the jolly shipmates who runs the ferry when she isn’t there, behind the wheel. He looks excited, and she doesn’t blame him; they don’t get this boat out of its covered storage space often. It gleams with an improbable luster tonight.
She people watches. It’s fun to see the town, usually behind counters or sweeping up shops, bedecked in their (somewhat humble) finery. There’s Su and her string bean of a husband, talking to the high school vice principal, little glasses of cordial in their hands. Freddie, their town librarian, adjusts his bow tie in the reflection of a brass pole. It looks like Pop has brought his daughter for a date, and she wears a corsage of burnt-orange mums.
There are some faces missing, of course. Somehow, death and loss can still reach them here in the snow globe. Russ. Jason. These are jarring absences, but no one else seems at all aware of anything off. She casts an eye for Lou, but Autumn slips her arm into Sasha’s elbow, and she is distracted.
“Ooh, puff pastries,” she says. “You tackle the caterer, I grab the whole tray?”
Sasha laughs. “I think—” But the steamboat’s whistle interrupts her. Beneath them, the boat rumbles. They’re some of the last aboard. The steamboat is getting underway. They chug out onto the dark water, the same misty currents Sasha has traversed so many times before. Quietly, she urges the shorelines to hold them snugly, and allow nothing, no bad winds, no thunder, to puncture the evening for her.
First, they do a tour of all the hors d’oeuvres floating around the deck, and each receives a full critical review. Almost always, Autumn has made a more delicious version of each delicacy, or has ideas about how she might. Sasha snickers, jabbing several smoked oyster canapes into Pip’s mouth.
They drift over to the bar for glasses of spiced cider. Sasha leans against the rails, gazing out at the rush of the river. The band is in full ecstasies on the upper deck. Back toward the town, and up on the ridge, twinkle bright, flickering stars. More phantom fires. “No one knows,” Sasha murmurs. “No one knows but us.”
“Yeah.” Autumn leans the other way, facing the people making a go of dancing under the string lights. Autumn tilts enough that her hand finds Sasha’s shoulder. “Is it bad that I’m happy?” she hedges. The turn of her neck makes it hard to meet her eyes, hard to see anything but the shine of her hair, and the butterfly clip keeping strands out of her face. “I’m kind of used to being—left behind,” she grits out. “I’m okay. Mostly. I’ve had a really good life. Mostly. But it’s hard to see people change. So finding you of all people again…even as messed up as all this is…” She swallows. “I’m just glad you’re here.”
They’re brave words, a confession that seizes Sasha by the heart. She dips her head, lips brushing Autumn’s, pulling her in to crowd Sasha into the banister. Pip smells of fall. “I guess I know what I’ve been waiting all this time for,” she says against Pip’s mouth.
Autumn’s breath catches lightly, and Sasha’s hand tightens against her hip in response.
“I’m actually kind of starstruck by you in a suit. So if I say something dumb, you better forgive me,” Autumn murmurs, tracing the lapel of her blazer.
Sasha snickers. “Say some more dumb things, please.”
The song ends upstairs, to a crackle of applause. “Dance with me?” Pip asks.
“I—yeah.” It feels like she’s lit from within by a warm lamp. Sasha twines their fingers together, and they trail up the stairs into the middle of the ball. They have barely an instant to take in the scene, the crowd of bodies, the color, the static press of the party, before the band fires up again and Sasha pulls her in. The trumpet player launches into an acrobatic solo, and Sasha does her best impression of a lindy hop. From somewhere close, cider flies into the air in a fragrant, boozy spray. They cling to each other, cracking up, as what feels like every person they’ve known their entire lives dances like it’s their last night on earth.
Once they’re out on the floor, Sasha doesn’t want to stop. Not because she loves dancing—actually, she’s spent most of her life in an introverted hunch, just off-screen, her camera as good as a mask for protecting her from unwanted eyes—but because the rhythm draws a heady flush into Autumn’s face, and Sasha wants to watch her forever. They mostly act like fools, laughing and bowled over with the flavor of it, sides aching, everything raw and sharp and so fucking beautiful.
And then the band slows, centering the sax, and couples find each other. They’re hot and panting, still giddy. Suddenly, Sasha feels slightly shy. It isn’t effortless, to do this here, where they know everyone and even that, maybe especially that, doesn’t make it safe. Sasha opens her arms anyway, and Autumn melts into them, and they sway.
There can be happiness here, she thinks. People can watch if they want. Let them see this. Let them see them like this, happy.
The dance is slow, and no one leads. They find every way to be close to each other.
It’s when her eyes are closed, her cheek pressed against the top of Autumn’s head, that Sasha feels it. Maybe it’s air currents, an icy wind moving through the labyrinth of bodies, like the erratic drafts in the winding hallways of an old house. Or, no, it’s not air—the feeling is more visual, a rapid blink of shadows over her eyelids, like sun shooting between the limbs of trees on a long car trip. Except it’s not quite that either.
Sasha opens her eyes. The song’s time signature skips into a frenzied three-four, and she sees it—and finally, she understands.
“Pip,” she says quietly. “They aren’t—look at them.”
Autumn stirs. It takes her a minute to see it too.
The dancers, their neighbors, drift in and out of focus under the boat lights. They look like a tape, a fuzzy TV-to-video recording unwinding into someone’s VCR. And noticing it—Sasha gasps. Noticing has made it worse. Now they flicker, one instant a crowd dense and laughing, the next, the boat is empty. It’s deserted, adrift in blackest midnight, far from shore. They’re alone.
They’re all alone here.
“What—” Autumn begins. There’s a shattering of glass.
The tape breaks. The lights are cut, the people gone. Somewhere far below them, a low boom quakes the deck.
And that’s when the fire starts.
The boom from the bowels of the boat vibrates through Sasha’s body.
She clutches Autumn. Cork, who’d been two-stepping in the corner, is gone. Gladys, who brought pictures of her son’s new baby, is gone. The jazz band is gone, leaving empty microphone stands, covered in a veil of cobwebs. There’s no one else; it feels like there’s no one left anywhere in the world.
“What was that?” Autumn asks. The shore is so far away. The water has lost its romance. Now it’s a serpent undulating beneath them as the riverboat lurches hard to one side and begins to turn its nose in the direction of the far bank. Some great mechanism beneath them coughs, sputters. Falls silent.
In the new quiet comes the sound of approaching footsteps.
How—Sasha squints, trying to assure herself that her eyes aren’t, once again, deceiving her. But every part of this place tries to deceive her now. She can’t trust any of this to be real anymore. They’re in a double-exposed photograph, image and afterimage in a blur. They can’t deal in realities now; all they can do is face whatever comes, be it fact or folklore.
Jason saunters toward them on bare feet, even as the riverboat gives another ominous shudder. In his hand is a tray of three champagne flutes. “Sorry I’m late,” he says.
How is he here?
“Where have you been?” Sasha asks. A low-grade panic is rising in her body. “Lil’s been looking for you.”
Jason offers them the champagne. “Just saw her, actually. She”—his breath hitches—“isn’t coming tonight. Just us.”
“We shouldn’t be here either.” Sasha speaks slowly, deliberately, like he won’t understand. The disconnect between them feels vast. “Something’s wrong with the boat. We need to—”
“A toast,” he cuts over her. “To the good people of this town. To their waste.” He takes one of the glasses and salutes Sasha.
Sasha listens to the crack and groan of the boat. “We have to check on the boiler,” she insists. “We’re not safe—” She starts over toward the stairway that leads to the lower decks.
Jason steps in front of her with a wide, empty smile and pushes the tray of champagne against her stomach. “It’s rude to leave when someone’s talking.”
Cold rushes through Sasha’s body. There’s something off in his voice, in the quivering lines of his frame. He is loose and bony, dislocated, his clothes hanging off him like he’s nothing but rags. His golden hair is singed and straw-like. The town’s perfect son is reduced, a scarecrow dummy dragging itself across the deck.
“What’s wrong with him?” Autumn asks behind them. “What’s wrong with you, Jason?”
His head snaps back, his gaze fixing on her. The lost expression on his face sharpens. “I got all the rest of you,” he confides, grinning at her. “You saw. You know.”
Autumn shudders in sickened alarm. “What are you talking about?”
Jason taps his champagne glass against another on the tray. Below them, the boat rumbles; the golden liquid shivers in its slender flutes. “Right, my toast. To you, Sasha,” he bites out, a bitter edge to his voice. “To the forgotten sister. Should have been left to the spirits, but they’ll claim you now.”
Her mind feels sluggish as she grasps desperately at what Jason is saying. It echoes, reminds her of an earlier conversation out on this river, one that could’ve happened yesterday or decades ago…one to keep, one to give away.
“That’s not Jason,” she murmurs, taking a step back. “It’s—” but how?
Fury morphs over that familiar face, twisting it into new shapes. “I am,” the thing wearing Jason snarls. Theon under a mask snarls. “I’m as much him as anyone ever was.”
“What the hell,” Autumn gasps.
Theon moves too fast, the glasses from the tray shattering against the deck. He has Autumn by the throat, bending her back as he chokes her into the railing. “I need—i need i need ineedineedineed…”
Autumn claws at his hand, her face a rictus of shock.
“You’re older than the others from the unwanted trees.” His wild eyes roll over her. “How will you taste?” Autumn’s shock morphs into rage.
“You’re—the hungry man,” she rasps. “Neel—”
“Last one left,” he growls.
Sasha lunges, but the boat lurches under them, and she falls to the deck, chin knocking on the hardwood.
Autumn is already fighting. She throws her knees up into his ribs, wrestling with her whole body against his grip, and Theon breaks out in hoarse, painful laughter. She wrenches, slamming both her feet into one of his. Theon’s laugh chokes off into a hiss. Again and again, even as her eyes bloom with scarlet, she brings the weight of her body down on him. He’s nothing like Jason standing there, his mask slipping away as he stares at her, snaps his teeth at her face.
Sasha searches clumsily, cutting her hands as she grapples for a weapon among the shattered glass.
“They all struggled too,” Theon snarls. Autumn’s nails rip at the flesh of his hand. And Sasha—her fingers find a substantial shard of glass. She straightens just as the miserable, destroyed mass of Theon’s foot seems to give and Autumn, with the last of her rage, tears herself out of his grip. She gasps for breath through painful coughs, and he takes a ponderous step back, seemingly fascinated by his own mangled foot, the remnants of her rage.
Sasha feels the glass slicing into her palm as she draws her arm back and drives it at this monster—
The shard slides over the emaciated cheekbone, curving with the eye socket, and Sasha runs it into him with her whole body, feeling the give and release of the eye all the way up her arm. Theon howls with agony as she pushes the glass straight through his eye, gouging as deep as she can. Blood and viscous matter flood from the wound, and Theon’s animal pain fills the night, bouncing off the ridge and resounding over the river. Sasha can’t form words, but she screams back at him, a territorial snarl from some long-silent misery in her chest, with every pain she’s ever quietly borne. It’s that feral sound that seems to send him stumbling out of his shock. He barrels backward, bloodied hand still clasped over his destroyed eye. Knocking first against the boat rail, he throws himself over it, down into the water below.
The boat shudders. Red light gleams on the water.
“Pip? Christ, I’m so sorry. You got him. He’s gone.” Sasha kneels beside Autumn, taking in the ugly red marks at her throat, the desperate whistle in her attempts to fill her lungs with air. Her gory weapon hits the deck just as the riverboat lists hard to the left and they nearly topple. “We have to move,” she says, getting her arms around Autumn to haul her to her feet. “I think it’s the boiler.”
“I’m—okay,” Autumn mouths, steadying herself. Sasha can’t afford to double-check if she’s telling the truth; in moments it’ll be too late. They rush down into the darkness, into the ominous orange glow.
Oily smoke belches up into Sasha’s eyes. She coughs. Reaching the stairs that retreat into the deep workings of the steamboat, Sasha takes a step toward the inferno.
“Don’t,” Autumn croaks, reeling her back. “We need to—steer? Or get on the lifeboats. Or something that isn’t going into fire.”
There’s a fire extinguisher a little ways down the stairwell, and Sasha pushes forward to it. She has blood on her suit, and fear can’t touch her anymore. “Maybe I can fight it,” she huffs, dragging the extinguisher off the wall. “If it’s small, I can save the—”
The boiler, left unattended, bleeds out in putrid black gusts. There’s much more smoke than actual flames. But it’s sweltering down here, the walls radiating heat rabid enough to burn if they were to bump into them. Coughing, Sasha unleashes the extinguisher in the direction of the boiler, which is almost eclipsed in the smog. The extinguisher shushes loudly and the boiler hisses in response, a feral cat unwilling to be calmed. Sasha winces, advancing, her face lit by sparks and flecks of soot.
There’s a momentary flush of hope, as if, maybe—
The steamboat gives a long, low groan, and the hull nearest the boiler buckles in toward them. Water busts in at a seam, and the world lurches hard, listing right this time. Gravity shifts, and they’re nearly thrown into the fire. Autumn grabs onto the banister, wrenching Sasha upright with enough force that Sasha’s feels her shoulder creak in its socket. “Run,” she screams hoarsely at Sasha, water crashing in from every side. They plunge upward—what was once up—a miserable lunge toward a deck that is screeching down to the water. Autumn staggers up, hoists herself over the rail out over black writhing water.
Together, they leap, and together, they hit the icy churn of the river.
But, of course, once Sasha is caught in the flow, she is alone. Sucked deep in fast currents, everyone is alone.
This riverboat, this bend in the river, has always been her place, almost like the pond, it turns out, has always been Lil’s. But water is a fickle friend. Sasha struggles when she should relax, fighting for the surface—she opens her eyes, and there he is, a dark stain like an oil spill seeping through the water around her. Caught only in the dwindling reflections of the fire above, she can make out that single eye. He rushes at her, a dash that feels like rage and panic, and Sasha is cast farther below. Her head collides with some mangled debris from the destruction above, and Sasha drifts into unknowing.
Autumn flails beneath the surface, buffeted by the current like a toy. The dark shape of the sinking wreck. It’s too dark to find the way up. The languishing steamboat tugs at her, ripping at her ankles as she kicks back from it. Sasha’s gone, their hands pulled apart by the furious current.
Autumn holds her breath, dreading the sucking grip of the riverbed. Through the water, some massive broken-off piece hits with a grounding shudder, bubbles escaping, rising past her nose—bubbles. Up. There’s up. Autumn kicks off her sneakers and fights her way from the density of the water into the density of night.
Her head breaks the surface into harsh air and a riot of shouting. The land tilts at an angle—a wave rushes over her head. River currents, swift and dangerous. She kicks blindly toward the first bit of land she sees, and hopes it’s the right way.
“—tumn! Autumn!”
There’s the shore, the dock, looming ahead of her, but she can’t go yet, not until she finds—
“Sasha!” Autumn screams, ripped from her sore throat. “Sasha!”
She can’t find her in the darkness. A fear colder than the river grips her even as she stumbles onto the shore, mud sucking at her feet. The prow of the boat is sticking out above the surface, but it’s sinking so fast. “Sasha!”
Warm hands find her shoulders and drag her back out of the water but she fights. She can’t leave, she has to find Sasha.
Familiar dark eyes invade her vision. Lil, frantic and fierce, searches her gaze before whipping around and running up the bank, racing to get ahead of the current. She braces herself before charging into the water and stroking powerfully into the river of ink, toward the white-frothed mouth of the river where the boat is making its final descent. Smoke drowns the moon.
Autumn casts around the water for some help—
Someone stands on the bank. She can’t see much, just a slight, masculine frame and a jagged shadow like antlers above his—
“Autumn!” Lil calls from downstream and Autumn whirls back. Lil’s barely above water, battling the current to reach a sandbar. Because she’s struggling with a limp weight around her shoulder. A body in a soaked emerald suit.
No.
Autumn stumbles down the bank, reaches the Clearwater twins where it’s shoulders-deep and pulls half of Sasha’s weight against her.
“She’s okay, she’ll be okay,” Lil’s babbling. “She’s okay.”
They lay her on the bank with a wet slap.
“She isn’t moving,” Autumn stammers.
“I know.” Lil’s voice is calm. She’s all focus even while Autumn wants to crumple into a ball at Sasha’s side. So she shores herself up.
Autumn tilts Sasha’s head back while Lil brushes aside her blazer and starts compressions. Her mouth is a thin line. Water drips from her fringe. One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three.
Sasha’s impossibly pale, and Autumn brushes her hands across her forehead, clears water from her eyes where it mats her lashes shut. A small figure appears at her elbow, a familiar mask over his face.
The silence feels very long, and a sob builds in Autumn’s throat. And then—
Sasha splutters weakly, water from her lungs dousing her face. Immediately, she heaves herself over onto her stomach and coughs, coughs, coughs again.
Lil hunches over her, hands falling on her shoulders, clumsy, broken sobs erupting from her chest.
Autumn wants to kiss her everywhere, bleed warmth back into Sasha’s skin, feel the assurance of her breath. She leans forward and rubs her back. Soothes her, calls to her gently.
Sasha’s shoulders shake hard, and the hoarse coughs turns to a desperate gagging.
“She’s choking,” Autumn says uselessly.
Eyes wild, Lil slaps Sasha on the back.
With a full-body spasm, Sasha expels something into the mud. Blood, Autumn registers dimly. At first, it looks like tonsils—or teeth?
And then Lil rolls Sasha away, onto her back, where she lies still.
There in the mud, the mass of blood and phlegm seems to glitter. Something golden, like a ring or a coin. Lil is gaping at it, her face as white as her twin’s. Entranced, Autumn picks it up, rolls it between her fingers.
It’s a pecan. A golden pecan.