20

The girl wakes and looks around. It is dark. She can barely see the fire. But she can smell it, and she knows that even though it is not big, it will still hurt her if she were to get too close. She touched it once, many moons ago. A piece of tree glowing like the sun. The girl rubs her fingers together now. She can still feel the hurt if she tries really hard. Maybe that is why she is awake.

She begins to sit up but cannot move. The woman’s arms are tight around her. They hold her down. The girl fears for a moment that she cannot breathe and will end up under the ground in the square forest next to brother, but then she breathes and knows she is okay. Mother used to hold her like this. And brother, too. Mother held the girl and brother at the same time. The girl wishes they could all sleep together now, but she knows that they can’t because mother is not here, and brother is not here. But the woman is here, and the warm, soggy hugs don’t feel so bad.

Sometimes, the girl sees mother outside. Mother is running again. She is very strong and very fast again, and mother wants her back. The girl could’ve left this morning. She could’ve run away from the woman. But she didn’t see mother anywhere. Salty tears drip down her cheek and pool in her ear. The girl misses mother. Maybe that is why she is awake.

The girl wants to practice saying words, like she and brother used to do in the sleep cave, late at night. But brother is not here to practice with her. Brother is not here to smile when she gets a word right or laugh when she gets it wrong. Brother is nowhere now, and the girl is alone. So she practices the words they learned, all by herself.

“Sheet,” she whispers, breath barely passing her teeth.

“Food.”

“No.”

“Fire.” That one was hard for her to say at first, but brother helped her.

“Chic-ken.” That word is a hard one, too. Like it’s two words. The girl had to learn them separately and then put them together in her mind. But she still says each piece, one at a time.

“Dead.” Brother was not here to practice this one with the girl. She learned it on her own, when the woman became very sad and screamed this word over and over.

The girl feels something that she doesn’t recognize, deep in her tummy. It’s a little like being sick, and a little like being dizzy and a little like all her insides have come out through a hole in her chest, and she is nothing but empty skin. She feels like she wants to laugh, and like she wants to cry, and like she wants to scream as loud as she can. Like the time she, mother, and brother were scaring hares from a hole. They screamed and screamed and hit the dirt and stomped their feet and made all kinds of scary and silly noises together. That’s the feeling. That’s what she wants to do right now. For brother. She wants to go outside and stomp her feet and make all kinds of scary and silly noises so brother will come out of the hole. But the girl understands more than she used to. Brother isn’t hiding in a hole like a hare. He’s dead. He got very sick, like she was sick when she ate the pointy flowers. But unlike her, brother didn’t get better, and he went away forever, and he’s never coming back, no matter how hard the girl stomps on the dirt. Maybe that is why she is awake.

The woman squeezes tighter, and the girl feels the woman’s hurt. The woman is hurting so deeply that the girl thinks her own chest might burst open, and she wraps her thin arms around her belly to keep everything inside. She hopes she is strong enough. The hurt is in her teeth, and the hurt is in her gut, and the girl did not realize that one person could have so much hurt. Maybe that is why she is awake.

The girl shifts and stretches and wraps the woman’s arms tightly around her so she can be warm and wet again, just like with mother and brother. If she closes her eyes really tight and thinks really hard, she can feel the roughness of mother’s hands touching her. She can smell brother’s hair right in front of her face. She can hear brother mumble in his sleep, and hear birds above, and feel the wind blowing through the trees.

The girl does not want to open her eyes for the rest of the night, because right now, she is no longer in the cabin. She is in the forest with her family. And if she opens her eyes, it will all go away.

Adelaide wakes with the taste of vomit on her tongue. The rising sun is like a sickness, and her body moves as though constructed of crooked lumber and rusted screws. Already she is sweating. If it were summer, she would blame the heat. But it is not summer.

Last night was silent. No men. Adelaide had not expected a restful night’s sleep, and their lack of retaliation is unsettling. They’re toying with her, allowing her to grow complacent. Adelaide presses her knuckles into her eyes, swallows the lump in her throat.

Her nightgown is discolored with a dark wetness, and she plucks the fabric from her body to inspect it. Sweat. Dirt. A stain the size of a small child.

River.

Dear god, River.

Adelaide leaps from the sofa and barks, “River, River, River.”

She bolts from room to room, searching corners she’s already searched. There are not many places to hide in her cabin, and she paces back and forth, hoping to see something she missed. Under the bed, above the cupboards, in the closet, behind the coats and slippers.

She sees it then—a sliver of sunlight from beneath the open front door. A gust of wind pushes the door farther open, flinging dirt and snow into the living room.

The lock has not been broken. It is simply unlatched.

Adelaide failed to lock the cabin door last night and they have come, after all. The men. They have her. Took her from the sofa while Adelaide slept. Snatched the child right from her lap, and she has no one to blame but herself.

Adelaide rushes to the door and crashes into it, her shoulder exploding against the wood as she emerges blind into the brilliant daylight.

No tire tracks. No hounds. No sign of the men.

Or River.

Adelaide doesn’t know where to run, where to look. But she hears a noise and launches into flight, flinging herself toward something, because anything is better than the fear. The not-knowing.

And then she sees River.

Behind the wattle fence, beyond the garden that once had a gate, River sits and talks to her brother.

Adelaide walks quietly, avoids branches, controls her breathing. She doesn’t want to intrude—not really—but neither can she stanch her curiosity. As she creeps closer to River, she hears that familiar, special-speak of the children.

River turns and their eyes meet. Adelaide’s presence doesn’t seem to bother her, and so Adelaide sits, knee to knee, beside the girl.

But River, it seems, has no more to say, and the two of them sit in silence.

Adelaide runs a hand across Little Bird’s grave, smoothing the dirt. She looks for Henry and Zelda, but they are nowhere to be found.

How different her life is now. A month ago, Adelaide was the only person in the Blue Ridge Mountains. This was never the case, of course, though she may as well have been. But she’d been wrong. She’d been wrong about so many things. She knows this now. So here she sits, in her garden.

With a daughter.

And a dead son.

Moffit gone, Henry and Zelda now all alone.

A wild woman stalking her home.

Evil men at her doorstep.

River’s hand glides toward Adelaide, and something dangles from the girl’s fingers. Adelaide jumps. In the girl’s tiny hand, a dead snake. In her other hand, a second, its head snapped nearly in two. Adelaide corrects her scowl and takes the offering.

River smiles, and as Adelaide examines the snake in her hand, River begins to chew flesh from the one in hers.

Adelaide scans the forest, looking for the wild woman. She has been here. And once again, she has brought gifts. But there are no signs of her. No footprints, no sound, no feel of her in the morning air.

The child has collected her own.

Adelaide wants to smack the snake from the girl’s hand and launch it into the trees, but she hesitates. River may as well be eating a summer sausage. At the end of the day, it is simply food, so she lets the child be.

In the distance, a sound that has become all too familiar. Subtle at first but growing louder. Snapping branches and rustling leaves. Someone approaches. Closer to the cabin. Closer to River.

The very air, it seems, is committed to snatching everything from Adelaide’s life. Perhaps this is her penance for wanting more, for wanting a second chance. Not everyone gets a second chance. Not everyone deserves it.

She lifts River from her knees and pulls her toward the cabin. The child protests but is no match for Adelaide, old woman or not.

At the cabin door, Adelaide pushes River into the living room and turns to scan the forest.

Tucked within the tree line, just outside the wattle fence, Adelaide spots the wild woman, nearly invisible in the shadows.

River presses against Adelaide’s legs, craning to see into the clearing, but Adelaide drives the girl back, thrusting her toward the sofa.

Adelaide still holds the dead snake in her hand—her third bad omen—and she flings the carcass from her fingers, tossing it to the dirt. It lands with a wet thud, and Henry nudges forward to investigate. He fluffs his feathers and pecks at the dead animal until it is skewered by his beak.

Henry chortles a sound of celebration and darts behind the cabin as Adelaide steps inside and locks the door.

For the last hour, the wild woman has stalked the perimeter of Adelaide’s property. Her slight limp, though noticeable, does not impede her stealth. Nor her frustration. Adelaide watches from behind the relative safety of her kitchen window, convinced that they are no longer friends.

The wild woman bays, spits, and stomps through half-frozen mud. Sometimes she walks upright, and Adelaide sees her as a woman. At other times she gallops on all fours, and Adelaide sees her as a beast.

This morning, while sitting with River in the garden, Adelaide had a thought. It was fleeting at first and just as quickly dismissed. But the thought persisted, and Adelaide now knows what must be done. For the first time in days, she has a real plan to keep River safe. From men, from beasts, even from Adelaide herself. A mother’s ultimate sacrifice. Maybe this time—finally—she’s made the right decision.

Adelaide searches the cabin for a basket and finds one above the cupboards, where Little Bird and River once hid before they earned their names. Inside the basket, she places boxes of food, cans of food, and a large canteen of water. She places the butter-yellow knitted cap, the small gray elephant, and a soft, thin blanket into the basket as well, tucking them around the edges so nothing will fall out.

Outside, the wild woman howls, and River flinches.

Outside, the wild woman whines, and River leaps up and down at the window.

Adelaide visits the closet one more time, searching for clothes for River. Though it is too large for a child, Adelaide decides on a shrunken wool shirt. Something she can easily toss over the girl and tie around her waist before she realizes what is happening. The journey ahead of them is too long, and too cold, for a naked child to endure.

Adelaide slips her paring knife into her apron pocket and lays the larger knife on the side table beside the lantern. She then sits next to the girl, placing the basket between them. River reaches for the elephant and Adelaide allows her to pull it out and cuddle it to her chest. The girl rocks back and forth, the animal squished against her belly. With growing apprehension, Adelaide places a hand on River’s back.

“I don’t know if you can understand me, little one. I suspect you understand more than I give you credit for. Oh dear, how do I explain this?”

River watches her intently.

“Down the mountain,” Adelaide begins and pauses, searching for the right words. “Down the mountain, there is a town.” She waits for any sign of recognition before continuing, but as usual, River’s face is placid. “And that is where people live.”

River points to the sofa.

“Yes, we live here, but this is not a town. A town is where lots of people live. All together. Like a family.”

River points out the living room window. To the last place she saw her mother.

“Yes, some people live out there, I suppose, but that’s not a town either. And it isn’t safe.”

Adelaide is failing at this, and she tries to explain it another way.

“Imagine that there are many Adelaides and many Rivers living all around us every day.”

Adelaide holds both hands in the air, unfolding her fingers one by one. River’s eyes grow wide.

“Yes! Yes, exactly. That’s a town. Sort of.”

Adelaide rubs her forehead. How is she going to say this? River speaks before she has figured it out.

“Tow . . .”

Adelaide gasps. “Oh my, yes! Town!”

“Tow . . . n.”

Adelaide lunges across the sofa and wraps her arms around the girl. River laughs and squeezes back. Adelaide pulls away and grasps her shoulders, staring into those dark, bewitching eyes.

“You did it! Town!”

River smiles and shrugs. A piece of Adelaide’s heart breaks away, and she knows it will never grow back. Not after today.

“Wait,” she says to River, “I almost forgot.”

Adelaide searches the side table, her bedroom dresser, and every drawer and cabinet in her kitchen until she finds it. A scrap of paper bearing the name and address of a stranger. When Adelaide walks back to the sofa, she is slower than before. Because now it’s real. And her confidence is quickly draining away.

She sits beside River and shows her the paper.

“This person is a friend of my daughter’s. Maybe she will help us. Maybe you can live with her and be a part of her family. Or maybe she can help find you a new family. A family who has been waiting for a little girl, just like you.”

River points to the living room window. Her finger is rigid and lean muscles strain in her arm.

“I know. Trust me, I know.” Adelaide folds the note and tucks it into the basket. “She’s a stranger to you. She’s a stranger to me, too. But she’s the only person I know, now that Catherine is gone.”

She places her hand on the girl’s outstretched arm, bringing it down into her lap.

“Out there? Not safe for you. Or for me. Hurt. Pain. In the town, you will have a family. A real family. You will have your own bed, and you can go to school and see a doctor when you get sick, and never, ever, ever, end up in the ground like Little Bird.”

The girl is quiet, and an emotion that looks a little like anger passes over her face but is gone so quickly that Adelaide cannot be sure that it was there at all. She doesn’t know what else to say to the child. She is the adult, and she has made her decision. It’s best for River. It’s best for everyone. This cabin is no longer safe.

“You will have to wear clothes. Just this one time, I need you to wear clothes. No one walks around naked. Everyone in the town wears clothes.”

“Tow . . . n.”

There is a sadness in this word when River says it again and celebrating it doesn’t feel right anymore.

“Yes, little one. We will be traveling to town today,” she says, glancing to the window, and to the wild woman somewhere beyond. “As soon as it is safe.”

Adelaide doesn’t know what will happen when she drops the child off with this stranger. But River’s odds are better than her own. What will happen to her? Where will she go? Home, she imagines. Back to her little cabin in the woods. But who—or what—will be waiting for her?

She pushes her hand through a kitchen cabinet, looking for a meal more suitable than a snake. Behind her, River runs to the window, gazing into the forest. She practices her new word, and a few others Adelaide has not heard before.

“Tow . . . n.

Sheet.

Food.

No.

Fire.

Chic-ken.

Dead.”