Orla lay in bed, half asleep. The half-aware part of her was attuned to a peaceful vibe she hadn’t felt in a long time. The house was quiet. Dreamlike. A few bird trills and crow caws outside the window. She flexed her feet, then slowly pointed them. She inhaled through her nose and let her breath spread throughout her body. She focused on the breath, followed its journey down her limbs. Let her mind go blank. When she exhaled, her muscles melted into the sheets. Sun played at the edges of her closed eyes, the edges of the closed blinds. The urge to dance made her lie perfectly still, her mind at work. Dance had been a meditation, a full body-mind transformation to another way of being. A symphony played in her head and she saw herself moving, telling the story of her adult life.
It was buoyant at first, the excitement of a new arrival. Petite jumps, a youthful animal investigating an unknown place. Exaggerated head movements as she looked outward, onward, searching for a familiar horizon, finding only a strange and wild landscape. And then the music grew more chaotic. Other dancers took the stage. She reached out for them but they spun away as if they were attached to ropes that reeled them in, tugged them off their feet. Orla was supposed to take their hands, form a connected chain, and after much lurching and chasing, they were finally able to dance in a line, in unison. But soon they began separating, drifting into the dark wings, and a new creature stood in a spotlight.
Softer moments followed, a pas de deux of two lovers nuzzling. A pair of wobbly-legged fawns ventured in, darting everywhere, exploring everything. The family’s play was ruptured by a bolt of frenzied music—the dancers leapt and fell to the ground, rose and beseeched and raced. Reached and collapsed and extended one leg, then the other. And finally the music became elegiac as the remaining dancers, one by one, were absorbed by the spreading shadows, leaving Orla alone in a harsh pool of light. She beat her breast with choreographed grace.
Orla shifted in the bed, a jerked reaction as her body tried to fix the dream, summon the dancers who’d vanished in the dark. Suddenly conscious, she winced. Her muscles ached; it all came back. The nightmare of her existence. Too long in the snow the previous day, on her knees with Shaw’s head on her lap. She opened her eyes.
In real life, the Empire City Contemporary Ballet would never have given her the principal role of Survivor. But here she was, and it was worse than when her little brother had died; then she’d been confused in a different way, but her parents were there. Now she was utterly without a partner, tasked with saving her children and ignorant of every move that would lead their dance to a triumphant conclusion.
The children weren’t in bed beside her. Where were they? She tossed back the covers and angled her sore self upward. Groaned as she swung her legs over the edge of the mattress. If Shaw were there, she could ask him to rub her lower back. If Shaw were there, she’d take a hot bath in the claw-foot tub and let him fix breakfast for the kids. If Shaw were there…
But he wasn’t. The house felt empty. Where were the kids? She bolted from the bed, still in yesterday’s clothes, and shuffled into her slippers.
“Bean? Tigger?” They weren’t in their rooms. A moment later, she confirmed they weren’t in the living room. Her body felt hungover, abused. They weren’t in the kitchen. She poked her head into Shaw’s studio, hoping to see Eleanor Queen with a guitar on her knee and Tycho on the floor with paper and crayons. “Eleanor Queen?”
A match whisked to life in her gut, set her insides alight. She’d hoped they were playing in their new fantasy world. But they weren’t there. Or here.
“Tycho? Eleanor Queen?” She called loudly enough for her voice to carry throughout the house. When they didn’t answer, she had one more idea; she sprinted into the kitchen and whipped open the basement door. They might have guessed where their Christmas presents were hidden. “Are you down there?”
The silence mocked her. If she tumbled down the stairs, she’d land in its mouth and it would swallow her.
It had taken the children. It came for her children in the night and now she was alone and would be alone forever. Was it a punishment? What had she done?
She spotted the boot tray by the front door. Some old shoes and one pair of boots. Hers. That meant—
“Shit!” She kicked off her slippers and stuffed her feet into her boots. Shaw had died wearing his. But the children’s should have been there. She couldn’t imagine why Eleanor Queen would have allowed her brother to go outside, not after they’d discussed lying low, keeping indoors to see if It tired of them or made Its intentions more clear.
Orla pulled on her coat and hurried outside, her soul ill equipped for another horrible, panic-filled morning. “Eleanor Queen! Tycho!”
Fresh snow crunched beneath her feet as she stepped off the porch and followed two pairs of small prints. There must have been a brief spell of freezing rain; the new snow was coated with a thin layer of glittery ice. It was beautiful with the sun splashing across the expanse, reminding her of the rainbow prisms she’d seen reflected through the bathroom window. She forged her own path, oddly satisfied by each step of her boot cracking through the shimmering shell. If only she could crush everything with her feet so easily, just as she’d once demolished the two-headed mutant in the snow. Crush a trail back to the Chelsea co-op, ambush the new owners—“Surprise!”—and then chuck them out on their asses. How she longed to see her children race to the safety of their cramped old room.
Her mood eclipsed further as she neared the garage; it was all too obvious where the small footprints led. She feared what she would see when she reached the far side: her wise daughter and her fragile boy, mouths smeared with blood as they devoured their father’s remains.
When she came upon them, they looked only startled and guilty. They knelt beside Shaw in the snow, pajamas beneath their coats, one corner of the tarp pulled back. Orla fought down a horrible fit of laughter. He looked like a flag—red, white, and blue. White skin tinged blue. Even from afar, his flesh looked unyielding, solid as ice. Ghastly. And the red blood had frozen, like spiked icing on a messed-up, gory cake.
Eleanor Queen had the wounded eyes of a child expecting punishment. But Orla couldn’t possibly yell at her. Instead, her own culpability was a stinging gash, made worse by the cold—her children were gazing at what she’d done, and what if they deemed her unforgivable?
“What are you doing here?” Orla went around them and dropped to her knees to secure the tarp.
“He wanted to know. He kept asking, Where’s Papa?”
“You shouldn’t have shown him this.” She tucked Shaw in and tried to hide her face behind her own shoulder so the children couldn’t see it. She felt their eyes on her, watching her. Murderer. Monster. “It was a terrible accident.”
“I told him that, Mama.”
Tycho pushed himself out of the snow and onto his feet. He held out his arms for Orla to carry him. “We said a little prayer so Papa knows we love him and maybe he’ll still play with us sometimes.”
Orla rose to her feet and hoisted him onto her hip. As much as she didn’t want her children to condemn her for what she’d done to their father, Tycho’s easy acceptance made her throat tighten. Someday she’d have to give a more formal explanation to a less loving authority. The thought of losing her children, by any means, made her hug him tightly. “I’m glad. I’m glad you said goodbye. But I don’t want you to remember him like this. Remember him full of life, okay? Come on.”
A tear trickled down Eleanor Queen’s cheek as she got up, taking her mother’s outstretched hand. “You aren’t mad?”
“I was worried. I thought we’d decided to stay inside for a few days.”
“It was so nice out,” said Eleanor Queen.
They headed back to the house. Orla flashed furtive glances at the blue sky, the sparkling, untrampled snow, the pair of crows alighting like talkative old friends on an overhanging branch. She didn’t trust any of it. And…were the trees even closer than they’d been before? Their branches outstretched like gnarled goblin arms, lunging for the sturdy walls of her home? She ushered the children indoors and glared at the beauty one last time before retreating inside.
“You will not get us.”