Violet

45

The lake house smelled mustier than I remembered, but maybe that was because it had been closed up for a long time. The first thing Lily did when we got inside was go around and light all the candles, since it didn’t have electricity, or even water taps. Some of the candle wicks sputtered and complained, but most of them behaved, so it didn’t take long before we could see the lake house properly.

Grandma Fiona had owned the house before, and Lily said she had gotten it from her older sister, Lois, who had died. Mama had loved her aunt Lois and always talked about how she was an artist who did things her own way. She had even played the violin, like Lily. In the picture Mama kept, she was a tall woman with fancy black hair, smoking a small, slim cigar. Back at the town house, we had a collection of green mugs shaped like goblin heads that Aunt Lois had made, which we used for hot chocolate. Lois hadn’t been the first one in our family who owned the lake house, though. Grandma Fiona had told us it was where all of them had lived before deciding to go and grow apples and plums. I could see why they left, since I didn’t think the Bonewood should be made into an orchard; it was too wild and wonderful for that. There were a few apple trees around the lake house, though, so I supposed they had tried one time.

The lake house wasn’t very big. It was just the ground floor and a loft with two beds built in under the rafters, but there was lots of stuff everywhere: board games, clothes, art, and fishing gear. Almost all the walls had paintings on them, and there were sculptures balancing on the shelves. Most of them were made by Aunt Lois, and it was easy to see they were hers, since they reminded me of the goblin mugs. There were even more goblins in the lake house: blue, green, and brown ones, but also other creatures. I recognized the mermaids, but Lily had to tell me that the other strange clay women hanging on the walls were harpies and dryads. The dryads had twisted, branchlike limbs, which I liked a lot. Even the low ceiling was full of things: weird-looking suncatchers mostly, made from feathers, mirrors, pebbles, and little bones. They made me feel funny inside. Some of them were so long that if you sat on the quilt-covered couch, a feather might tickle your head.

The best thing about the living room, though, was the large fireplace, which took up most of the back wall. We had roasted apples there before, and eaten them with cinnamon. The best thing for Lily was the old violin that hung on the wall, right between a harpy and a mermaid. She stopped to look at it for a very long time, and even ran her hands over it.

The small kitchen was on the other end of the living room. It wasn’t a proper kitchen, just a blue-painted counter and a row of cupboards crammed with Aunt Lois’s mugs and plates. There was also a small camping stove on the counter that had to be plugged into a gas canister with a hose. There was no refrigerator, but there was a trapdoor in the floor leading to a small space with some shelves to store food. When I was little, I had thought it was exciting to sit on my knees on the floor and reach down in the darkness to find the butter or cheese. I liked the smell down there as well: dirt and something cold, like lake water.

The only other thing downstairs was the bedroom where Mama and Papa used to sleep, in Aunt Lois’s old bed, with quilts and blankets in all kinds of colors. But when no one stayed at the lake house, all the bedding hung on a line under the ceiling, so it wouldn’t rot. There was an old washstand in there as well, with a porcelain jug and a basin painted with pink roses. The very best thing in there, though, was the collection of photographs hanging on the wall, in different sizes and frames. I went in there to look while Lily built the fire, because seeing all the familiar faces made me feel braver, somehow. There was one of Mama as a girl with Aunt Sarah, sitting in a rowboat in the sunshine on the lake. There was also one of Grandma Fiona, sitting alone on the porch and holding a bunch of apple blossoms. She looked so young and beautiful in that picture, and her eyes sparkled from happiness. Aunt Lois was there, too, her hair almost as black as Irpa’s wings, smirking and leaning against the timbered wall. Seeing them all so happy like that, I almost couldn’t believe that they were gone. We weren’t, though, and we were up there as well, in the upper left corner, sitting on the same porch as Grandma Fiona had, sipping iced tea from goblin mugs. I was so small in that picture that I had to use both hands to lift my drink.

I didn’t get to look at the pictures for long before Lily called me back into the living room and told me to lie down on the couch. The room felt a little less damp already, and the wood was crackling in the fireplace. I had felt much better since Lily ate the tadpoles at the train station, but I felt hot in my cheeks again and everything ached, so I was happy to get rid of the rest. These ones were blue and regretful, Lily had said, because the ghost lady had been that, too. Lily sighed when she looked at them and pulled up her sleeves. She had cracked the front door open, and soon Irpa came in as well, cocking her head in the door opening and looking so cute that I couldn’t help but laugh. When she had jumped around on the floor for a little while, she flew up in the air, sending the suncatchers swaying, and landed on the backrest of the couch. Then Lily started picking tadpoles, lifting invisible things to her mouth. It took a very long time to get all of them off, and I watched the flames while Lily worked, or lifted a hand to stroke Irpa’s feathers and tell her how good she had been to show us the way through the woods.

When all the tadpoles were gone, Lily got some of the pears and candies still in the shopping bag and placed them on the floor by the couch, alongside a goblin mug of lake water. She knelt down and placed a hand on my brow, then she closed her eyes. It really didn’t take long at all before I started feeling that the sickness had disappeared. It was like how mist rises from the lake in the mornings and hangs there for a while before it is suddenly gone. When Lily opened her eyes again, the pears were all shriveled up, the candy had cracked and was mostly just dust, and the goblin mug was empty. It felt so nice to feel good again.

After that, Lily and I ate some of the bread and cheese and drank several cups of lake water. Papa had loved that water—he said it was the best he had ever tasted anywhere in the world. Even the plates at the lake house had goblin faces on them, as small as coins, close to the rim, and none of them looked the same. When we weren’t hungry anymore, we went to the bedroom and climbed into the bed. We were both too tired to even take our clothes off. Lily had taken down all the blankets and quilts, and we nestled in under the pile. It was still cold in the room and a little damp, but Lily said that if we lay close together, we would soon warm up. Papa had taught her that.

When we had been lying there for a little while, and I had almost fallen asleep, Lily suddenly said, “Do you want to say good night to Mama and Papa?”

“Okay.” I folded my hands and closed my eyes. It had been a long time since we’d said good night to them—or their bodies. It just hadn’t been very practical while we shared a room with Aunt Clara. K2 was very snowy today, and I didn’t even see the red of Mama’s parka anymore. They were both deeply buried under a white duvet.

“Good night, Mama,” Lily said beside me. “We are at the lake house now. We have left Aunt Clara behind, because she was mean and made Violet sick.”

“Good night, Papa.” I took over. “We are in the woods alone, so it’s good that you taught us all those things about how to make a fire and gut fish.”

“We’ll be okay, though,” Lily said. “I don’t know where we’ll end up, but we’ll be fine.” Her voice sounded a little uncertain.

“We’ll figure something out,” I said, while listening to the howling wind on the mountain. “As long as Aunt Clara doesn’t catch us.”

We lay quiet for a while after that. I was looking at K2, while Lily probably worried. Finally, she said, “Maybe we should ask our family for help for real? Even if they are gone, maybe they can somehow tell us what to do?”

“Maybe they are helping us,” I said, and opened my eyes. “Maybe they are helping even if we don’t know it. We are here, aren’t we? Far away from Aunt Clara.” And it had only happened because Lily mysteriously found the map and Irpa showed us the way.

“Yes, but…maybe they could say something, tell us where to go.” Lily sighed beside me. “I’d like nothing more than to stay here, but I don’t know how we are going to survive alone…There’s canned food in the kitchen cupboards, but it won’t last very long, nor will the money in Aunt Clara’s wallet. Besides, sooner or later, the woman at the convenience store will notice two girls coming in alone all the time…There has to be somewhere we can go that is safe.”

“Do you remember Rotger, Lily?” I asked her, because thinking about Irpa had made me think of him. He had been Mama’s stray cat who used to hang around in our garden. Mama would feed him every day with fresh salmon and pieces of liver. When I had asked her if we should let him inside, she had said no, that he wasn’t that kind of cat.

“Yes. Of course,” Lily replied. She had liked Rotger very much.

“I think he was Mama’s familiar friend,” I said. “Like Irpa is mine.”

“Maybe,” Lily said after a moment. “He didn’t come anymore after K2.”

I nodded in the darkness. “He also felt like Irpa, only different.”

Lily shifted and turned to me in the darkness. “What did you see when Grandma Fiona died?”

“Her, of course—Grandma Fiona. Do you remember how the two of us and Mama stood by her bed when she died? I saw her rise up, but she wasn’t like herself. I could see through her, for one, and there was something wrong with her face. Also, she was white, like mist.”

“She maybe slipped out of her body?”

“Uh-huh,” I agreed. “Like the ghosts. But Grandma didn’t have any glue coming out of her.”

“What happened then? Where did she go?”

“Into Mama,” I said, since that’s what happened.

“Into Mama?” Lily sounded surprised.

“Uh-huh, and she never came back out again. At least not as far as I could see.”

“What was wrong with her face?”

“I don’t know.” I tried very hard to think back. “Half of it looked sick, while the other half looked as healthy as could be. Younger, too.”

“That is strange…Did you tell Mama?”

“No…She was so sad.”

“Yes, she was. I sometimes think that’s why she agreed to K2—and why Papa insisted on it. He just wanted to make Mama happy again. Perhaps the sadness was even why Mama didn’t realize how dangerous it was.” Lily went quiet for a while, and when she spoke again, she sounded excited. “Maybe Mama, too, went into us when she died? Maybe that’s why I see colors all the time, and why you see more dead people? Maybe that’s why her family could grow apples and plums where no one else could, because they were special people…?”

“I hope Mama went into us,” I said, and it did feel right. Maybe it was Mama inside Lily who had showed her the map.

“Perhaps she didn’t tell us about Rotger, or any of the other stuff, because she didn’t think she would die so fast. Maybe she thought we’d have time to prepare. She always wanted us to have normal childhoods, and not spend too much of Papa’s money.”

“We still saw things, though,” I reminded her.

“Yes, and Mama had Rotger before Grandma died, so she must have been special then, too—but maybe it grows stronger when someone dies.”

“That feels right.” I nodded, even if she couldn’t see me. “And we are the last ones alive.” Everything felt very serious for a moment, while I thought about what it meant. Maybe Aunt Lois was in us, too, and Aunt Sarah. Maybe they were the reason why I sometimes felt like I remembered things that I hadn’t ever actually known. “I miss old Rotger,” I sighed, when the seriousness started to feel so big that I thought I would maybe cry.

“Yes, I do, too.” I could hear Lily smiling. “Even if he wasn’t a very friendly cat, and only let Mama touch him.”

“What did you see when Grandma Fiona died?” I had told her my story, so it was only fair that she told me hers.

“It was before, when she was sick. Mama wanted me to put my fingers on her temples, do you remember that?”

“Yes, like with Fredric the squirrel.”

“Sometimes when I did that, I could see blue flames on her, and some golden ones, too.”

“Gold means love.” I took Lily’s hand on top of the quilt. “Maybe it made her better, what you did.”

“Maybe.” I could feel Lily shrug. “After I had done it every night for a week, Grandma asked me to stop, though.”

“Why?”

“I heard her tell Mama that it was fine and that she was ready. I didn’t understand it then, but now I’m thinking that maybe you are right, and it was something I did that helped her stay alive…Mama cried a lot after Grandma Fiona told her that.”

I squeezed Lily’s hand. “Do you think we are witches?”

Lily snorted. “Not like the ones in books. But maybe we are different witches.”

“Witches have cats, don’t they?” I was still thinking about Rotger.

“Or ravens.” I heard Lily smile again. “Maybe we can use magic to get rid of Aunt Clara.”

“Maybe,” I agreed. “But we don’t know how to do things—unless someone asks.”

“Mama would probably have known how,” Lily said.

“Yes.” I sighed. “But she isn’t here.”

“But if she is inside us, maybe we can figure it out?”