Eleanor Queen stamped into the house without bothering to kick the snow from her boots. She tossed the snowshoes by the door, propped up her bow, and threw herself into the ugly plaid chair. Orla closed the door behind them. And locked it.
“Why are you locking it?” Eleanor Queen demanded.
Orla shrugged. Locking it was a useless defense, but the impulse to keep Her out was strong. “Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad.” Eleanor Queen tugged off her sweater and threw it onto the floor. “I could do something and you don’t want me to do it.”
Orla wished her mattress were in its proper place, on her box springs, upstairs in her room. She wanted to crawl up the stairs, get into bed, pull the covers over her head, and awaken only when she was certain the tree—and the blasted thing within it—was dead. But she couldn’t keep an eye on her daughter from there. “What’s the saying? ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead’?”
“You aren’t making any sense.” Orla saw the false bravado in her daughter’s exasperation; Eleanor Queen was close to tears. She perched on the arm of the plaid chair and pulled the girl in close. “You’re smothering me.” She pushed away Orla’s needy arms.
“I’m trying to keep you safe.”
“It’s too late, why can’t you just let me—”
“It’s not too late. She’s dying, with the tree. When the tree’s dead, the spirit inside it won’t be a threat to us anymore. But in the meantime, before we’re too weak to do it, we need to try our hand at hunting.”
Eleanor Queen shot her a cautious look. “Like…kill an animal?”
“We can’t wait until there’s literally nothing left to eat. And there’s almost nothing.”
Something complicated made the muscles in her daughter’s face twitch. “We don’t all have to die.” The wistful words, barely a whisper.
“That’s right.” The truth was Orla didn’t see herself as a hunter, skinning an animal as its warm flesh steamed in the cold air. Nor did she see herself as a survivalist, learning her way around the complicated woodlands that surrounded their house. They had water, electricity, heat. And if she could keep them fed…
“Sometimes…” Orla said. “I read something, a long time ago, about how when you die, your electrical circuits go crazy, and maybe that’s why some people who were briefly dead come back and report seeing a tunnel of light, or visions from their life. I know you feel connected to the spirit, the girl, but dying is a natural process.” Unless it happened because of a gun. “I think what we’re seeing is Her…circuits. Going crazy. We tried to help Her—you know we tried. But I think we need to let Her go. And we need to keep ourselves as healthy as possible, while we wait. Are you okay with that?”
“Mama, I don’t want to kill anything. I don’t want to shoot an animal, and I don’t want the spirit to—it’s a life, Mama. I believe Her—we saw Her picture. She was a girl who came here from the city, like me. We share a connection, and it’s easier for Her with me than with Papa. She wasn’t trying to do anything bad—you told me there was no cure for tuberculosis. What was She supposed to do?”
Of course Orla couldn’t blame a scared young woman for wanting to live, but whatever was happening now wasn’t natural. A girl didn’t just become a supernatural element that lived in a tree. But she wouldn’t admit any sympathy for the course of the girl’s life; it might give Eleanor Queen even more reasons to feel sorry for Her.
“She hasn’t been a girl for more than a hundred years. She knows about…things, far beyond—”
But Eleanor Queen tuned her out, a rapturous look on her face. “It’s amazing, when I feel Her inside me, because I understand it all better now. She’s not evil. She’s like this amazing creature. She’s…” She searched for a word, struggling to find it. “Maybe…like when we studied the Greek gods in school.”
“She isn’t—” But Orla’s denial fell flat. Maybe She was. That didn’t make any part of what was happening any better. With power came selfishness. “We tried to say goodbye and help Her move on. I offered Her a new home, Bean—She said that’s what She wanted.”
“I know. And I know you’ll never forgive Her because of Tycho and Papa. But…it makes me sad. I can hear Her, I can feel Her. It’s like something’s dying in me too when She tries to make me understand.”
Orla fingered her daughter’s hair, the gathered ends below her braids like silken paintbrushes. The caged animal within her wanted to toss her last baby onto her back and run as fast as she could. Eleanor Queen was right; she’d never forgive Her for Tycho and Shaw, but she also held a volatile grudge about being trapped. Sometimes the sensation was so strong, Orla gasped for air. She was trying to make peace with their prison, but it always tugged at her, the urgent desire to get away.
“I know you want to help—She’s taking advantage of your goodness. I hate that She’s hurting you, but She needs to let you go, and you need to let Her go. You have to try. Build a wall in your mind, your heart, when you feel Her trying to get in. That’s how you help Her move on now, you make sure She knows you aren’t the answer. Can you do that?”
“I don’t know.” Eleanor Queen slumped against the armrest.
“When She’s trying to get in, you tell me. And I’ll talk you through it, building a wall, shutting the door. Locking it. The symbolism is important. I think She will understand.”
Eleanor Queen nodded but didn’t seem very confident. Orla was afraid the girl had already opened herself too much, that some tendril of the spirit’s consciousness was already inside her, expanding, tying Herself to her daughter’s soul.
“And if that doesn’t work, I’ll…bang the pots and pans, jump around.” Orla did a crazy dance, bounding around, flailing her arms, shouting random whoops and battle cries. Eleanor Queen giggled. “No one could concentrate through that. Right?”
“I guess.”
“Let’s get ready, before we lose the light.”
Orla held out her hand, and Eleanor Queen rolled off the chair.
In their former life, she’d never have suggested dragging either of her sensitive children on a hunt. They—in her heart, she was still the mother of two children—would have buried their horrified faces when the first blood dripped onto the snow. But even if Eleanor Queen hadn’t felt connected to the spirit, there was no way Orla would have left her behind, not when Shaw had appeared in animal form. And not when the being was continually improving on Her tricks. The spirit might claim She wouldn’t hurt her daughter, but it was too easy for Orla to imagine shooting a deer, only to have a corpse stare back at her with Eleanor Queen’s brown eyes.
They nibbled on the sweet pickle relish. Lunch. Tycho had eaten most of it—it had become a favorite side dish during their lean days—and there wasn’t much left. Eleanor Queen agreed to bring her bow so she could shoot at the occasional target. Orla had debated between the guns. The rifle remained the more logical choice for shooting large mammals. But Orla decided to go for a pheasant or a goose, even a crow. She told herself it wouldn’t be so different from preparing a Thanksgiving turkey, though the turkey came with its innards conveniently segregated in a plastic bag. The shotgun would work better for a rabbit or a squirrel too, though she guessed the local squirrels weren’t quite as domesticated as the ones she’d cooed over at city parks, fearless beggars that had almost taken food from outstretched hands.
She hated the gun and hated loading it. For her final precautionary measure, she tied one end of a rope around Eleanor Queen’s waist and the other around her own waist. So they couldn’t get separated. So there’d be no mistakes. So Eleanor Queen won’t run away. Her daughter scowled and rolled her eyes. Orla tried to convince herself it was hunger turning her sweet child surly, not the influence of a powerful and desperate entity. Her plan was to walk in a circle or a square—not unlike what Shaw had intended on his first venture away from the house—and not double back on her snow prints until it was time to return home.
While they’d been eating their meager lunch, the tree line had closed in yet again; it stood only feet away from the house. They eased through the trunks, turning as they needed so their coats wouldn’t scrape against the bark. Eleanor Queen must have felt it too, the fear of one coming to life and grabbing her if she awakened it with a touch. Orla worried that even if she could summon the energy for another round of hunting on another day, the trees might have fully imprisoned them by then. The dying spirit was unhappy; she read Her displeasure in the tight placement of the trees. Once they were past where the tree line had once stood, the land opened up a bit. Orla resumed breathing.
They headed off in a direction between the garage and the giant tree, and Orla planned to circumvent both; Eleanor Queen didn’t need to see the blue poking through the snow—the tarp that hid her father’s body.
“We’re going hunting, not leaving,” Orla called toward the giant tree. “Eleanor Queen needs to eat—You don’t want her to starve.”
In her mind it rained, and then the sun beat down. And the leaves caught the water, the light, and channeled the nutrients downward through the veins in a thick trunk, into a hidden expanse of roots. That’s what Eleanor Queen needs, so she won’t die.
“She understands hunger. She wishes She could help,” said Eleanor Queen.
“So She can read me when She wants to. How nice—”
“But you can’t understand Her.”
Well, she could when the entity looked like her husband. Maybe later she’d try summoning Her—is that what had happened the night before? If She couldn’t be convinced to take Orla instead, maybe Orla could waste more of Her energy, Her life force. Orla clearly remembered Her saying how taxing it was to speak so directly. What a victory it would be if she could get Her to talk Herself to death.
“She doesn’t have long, Mama—”
“Build your wall, Eleanor Queen.”
“It’s hard to ignore when something’s crying—”
Orla turned and sprang at her daughter, mooing like a crazed cow.
The girl shrieked, then got angry. “What are you doing?”
“Breaking your concentration.”
Eleanor Queen shot her a glare, and they resumed walking. Orla didn’t like the silence that settled between them, or the squint of concentration on the girl’s face. Was she listening to Her? Or was Eleanor Queen doing the talking now, ratting Orla out to the spirit, telling Her how her mother didn’t want them hanging out together anymore? Mama said you’re a liar. Orla couldn’t afford to lose her influence over her own child.
“Why don’t you try out your bow? See if you can hit that fallen tree.” Distraction, a mother’s handy backup plan whenever reasoning—or pleading—failed.
They stopped on some part of the homestead they’d never been before, and Eleanor Queen nocked an arrow onto her bow. Orla stood silently and watched her focus; she had no advice to offer, knowing nothing about archery, and trusted that Eleanor Queen, an avid reader, had done some research somewhere along the way. Her daughter’s patience was impressive. She pushed the bow away from her body and sighted her target—a rotten tree, half of it upright and supported by a living tree. When she was ready, she let the arrow loose.
It connected with a thwunk that made them both grin. “Well done—you’re a natural at this.”
Connected by their rope umbilicus, they trudged through deeper drifts to retrieve Eleanor Queen’s arrow. Orla opted to believe that as they moved farther from the great pine, her daughter’s connection to the spirit lessened and she became more herself, alternately watchful of the world around them and absorbed in her private thoughts. She huddled a few feet behind her mother whenever Orla aimed the gun, and covered her ears when she fired. Unlike Eleanor Queen, Orla never hit her intended targets, wasting precious shotgun shells. Their dinner flew away squawking. Panicked. Maybe they were treading too heavily, making too much noise. More likely she couldn’t shoot for shit. Her only triumph was not getting lost, their footprints a guiding path back to their prison.
What a failure. She needed to put supper on the table but could only hit a stationary target the size of a bear who masked a frightened man.