“You healed friggin’ fast,” noted Hunter, reaching over the lunch table to push at Freddie’s head so he could see the burn mark on his neck. The towheaded Irish kid whistled, impressed. “It’s looking good, my man!”
Freddie’s burns had healed faster than an ordinary mortal’s would have, but usually such healing was near instantaneous for him. His neck still appeared red in spots.
After lunch, the lieutenant eventually sent them on a call—a rather innocuous one, it turned out. An old man had tripped down some stairs in his apartment building and pulled the fire alarm. He was fine, a tough, grumpy old guy who kept refusing their emergency medical care, pushing them away, muttering unkind epithets.
Work ended at five thirty, and Freddie walked to the gym to do laps in the indoor Olympic-size pool. It had occurred to him that swimming would revive his lungs, which had felt singed from that fire and had also been slow to heal. He had taken to going to the pool in the early evenings and gotten hooked. Fire and water were his favorite elements—his elements as the god Fryr—but fire had betrayed him. If his powers were diminishing he needed to compensate somehow. He had been thinking that if they were slowly becoming mortals, then so be it. He and Gert would live happily ever after and die of old age together. It wasn’t so bad. They had each other. Once Freya returned, and she would—he didn’t doubt it—then life would be back to normal. He’d called Ingrid the other day and found his older sister sounding awfully blue. With Freya gone, they were all on edge.
The pale light of early evening filtered through the domed skylight above the pool. Freddie loved the smell of chlorine and the moisture in the air, the sounds of swimmers splashing through the lanes, the echo of voices, and even the occasional whistle from the lifeguard.
He dove in, slicing the turquoise water with the taut knife of his body. He did the crawl, getting into a rhythm: splash, silence, breath, splash, silence, breath… He was pure movement. When he reached the pool’s end, he curled into a ball, spun, then pressed his feet against the wall, launching out beneath the water like a rocket. His body felt agile and fit from these daily laps and all the sex he had been having with Gert lately. They had become insatiable, doing it as often as they could, wherever they could: downstairs in the laundry room against the spinning dryers and the tables used for folding clothes, in the car late at night, and once in a campus broom closet between Gert’s classes. Splash, silence, breath, splash…
When he couldn’t swim any farther, he climbed the ladder out of the pool. Panting, he removed his goggles and ran a hand over his forehead, pushing back his wet hair, shaking the water out of his ears. He rested, leaning over, hands on his thighs. His lungs stung but felt good.
He was not unaware of the other swimmers’ subtle looks, men and women alike gazing at him as he walked in his navy Speedo toward the lockers. Well, let them look… he looked good and he knew it.
He felt the pleasant ache in his muscles as he climbed the three flights up to the apartment. He unlocked the door and swung it open. His piglet familiar came running at him, as fast as its fat little legs would allow.
“Hey, guys, Daddy’s home!” Freddie called.
No one answered.
He petted his familiar. “Hey, Buster, Mr. Golden Bristles! Where’s everybody?” He tried again. “Hello?”
Nothing.
He checked the bedroom while Buster followed, snuffling at his heels. The bed was made but there was no Gert sitting there in a pile of books as she often did in the evenings. It was almost seven. Usually, around this time, she was here, reading and asking him to order pizza, Thai, or Chinese. Perhaps she was stuck at the library. He checked the pixies’ room. Their beds were not made, messy and rumpled—he’d get on their cases—but empty, too. Had everyone gone to the movies or something? Without him? A sad thought. That new comic-book hero film Sky Boots had recently opened, and it was all the pixies could talk about lately. He had promised to see it with them. Freddie had actually grown used to having them around. As much as he might be loath to admit to Gert, having them as his wards did satisfy a deep craving inside him. There was something very cool about being a dad—so to speak. This had been on his mind recently, and he had been waiting for the right moment to bring it up with Gert. Freddie wanted to be a father, and he believed he was ready. They were married. Wasn’t that what marriage was for?
He strode into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich, which he would eat by the window to keep an eye out for his family. He could always eat again with them if they hadn’t already eaten. He was famished. As he walked to the fridge, he did a double take. On the red fifties Formica table, he saw a note. He recognized Gert’s pale yellow stationery with the faint initials GL, and his heart sank like a sun plummeting too fast behind the horizon.
Freddie,
I’m sorry, I know this is unexpected and the last few weeks have been wonderful, but I need my space right now. I really need to get my degree without any distractions. I’ve only got one more semester till I graduate, and I have to concentrate on my thesis. I’ve gone to live with friends who are also studying. I hope you can wait for me. Please?
—G.
Who the hell were these friends? Judith? Or that pretentious asshole with the mustache—beard—whatever. He read the note again, irate. Just when he thought things were good, Gert pulled this one on him. What was wrong with her? She had been so loving since his accident, and he had been helping quiz her with her study cards after each one of their heated, sweaty sessions at home.
What did she mean by “distractions”? Was sex a distraction? Was he a distraction? He read the note a third time, not quite believing what he was reading and halfway expecting Gert to jump out of a closet and tease him for falling for a joke. But this was no joke.
He had been completely blindsided. He shoved the kitchen table, furious with himself and with her, and the note fell to the ground. He had believed they were back on track. That he was on track. Marriage. Children. Domesticity. Monogamy.
That’s when he saw the purple Post-it with a smiley face that had been stuck to the Formica beneath Gert’s note:
Picked up the scent. On our way to retrieve trident. Back soon. Please refill fridge for our return.
We had gone to parsonage with Mr. Putnam. We were to stand around the pastor’s hall, praying for the girls. It had grown dark outside. Abby and Betty were considerably more tranquil, as they had exhausted themselves. Invariably, they calmed in the evening in time for dinner and bed. Betty sat on the floor, her petticoats falling over her splayed limbs. She drooled as she stared down, her head like a poppet’s that had come loose at the neck. Meanwhile, Abigail crawled on all fours, mewling.
“Who did this evil?” Reverend Parris asked.
“Tell us! Who did this to you?” Mr. Putnam cried.
“Tell us! Who was the witch?”
The more the men badgered them, the more riled the girls became. Abby rose and ran across the room. “Whish, whish, whish!” she whispered, flapping her arms, while Betty flopped on the floor like a fish.
Abby stopped at the hearth and threw a firebrand across the room, then attempted to run up the chimney as she had oftentimes done before, but Mr. Ingersoll, the tavern owner and innkeeper, caught her and held her back. She eventually calmed, then fell and rolled about, hiding herself in her skirts.
“TELL US! TELL US!” the men demanded, their voices angrier and their faces red from rage.
“She will not let me say!” Abby screamed, holding her hands to her neck as if she were being choked.
Betty took the cue. “She torments me but I will not sign her book!”
“Who is it? Who is making you do this? Who is trying to make you sign the devil’s book, you poor child?” Reverend Parris asked.
Abby sat up, eyes wide, staring. Betty followed her lead.
“Do you not see her?” said Abby, pointing. “Why, there she stands!”
They all turned to me.
—Freya Beauchamp,
/>
June 1692
salem
may
1692
chapter nineteen
Miracle Worker
There was never a lack for work on the Putnam farm. The birds chirped in the trees and insects screeched and hopped as Mercy and Freya strode along the grassy path one day in early May. They held their baskets at their hips. They arrived at the potato field and stared out at the endless rows, daunted. It was already growing hot. Thomas Putnam had tasked them with the entire field.
“It’s bigger than I thought,” remarked Freya.
“Yeah, well, you know Mr. Putnam…” Mercy blew at a strand of hair.
Each girl took a row, kneeling in the dirt, and set about uprooting the spuds with their spades. They worked quietly for an hour, focused on getting as much done as they could. Freya wiped the sweat from her brow and neck. At the rate they were going, they would never get this entire field and everything else done today. Perhaps they could do a third of the field if they were lucky. There were the blackberries, ripe for the picking, that needed to be turned into preserves, not to mention housework.
“I have a crick in my back,” said Mercy, placing her hands there as she pressed her chest forward.
“We will be standing soon enough,” said Freya, squinting.
“Mr. Putnam must be crazed in his intellectuals if he thinks we can get it all done in one day.” Mercy did a double take at her friend.
“What is it?” asked Freya.
“Don’t you ever grow weary of it all? You are always smiling, Freya.”
Freya realized she was smiling and felt a bit embarrassed. “Why, I have a lot to be happy for. For one, I have you.” She chucked a couple of potatoes into her basket and grinned.
Mercy shook her head. When their baskets were full, they brought them to the edge of the field, where they emptied them in a bin. In the evening a farmhand would come around with a wagon on his way back to the farm. Mercy scuttled sideways on her knees to move down the row. “I have been working as far back as I can remember, ever since I was a wee girl. Yea high.” She placed her palm at her breast.
Freya giggled. “That small, eh?”
“I came out of my mother’s womb working, sister! A basket on my hip.” She knitted her brow. “Poor Mother, God rest her soul. Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for the employment, and to the Putnams, and for walking on the rightly path of God, but I do get weary of it from time to time. My body aches and my burned hand always hurts.” She closed and opened her scarred, dirt-caked fist. Her face suddenly took on a grave expression and she shook her head. They went back to work, silent and pensive for a while.
They had their differences, but Freya cared deeply for Mercy. Whenever Freya placed a hand on her friend, she could feel Mercy’s suffering, a great rushing river of sorrow. She felt the terror and powerlessness of a girl hiding as the violence took place, trembling at the sound of the blood-curdling screams of her family. She saw the chaos, the peeling of skin from flesh as if from a fruit. She felt all the panic and guilt of a girl escaping a fire in which the rest of her family perished behind her. Freya wished she could conjure some sort of nepenthe for Mercy to help her forget her past, but she did not know of one. It was ironic since she herself could not recollect her own past, try as she might.
Although there was something she could do to give her friend a little respite. It was very dangerous but her heart went out to the maid. She could bear it no longer. It would be just another of their secrets, she decided.
Freya pressed her hands to her thighs and stood. She waded across the clumps of dirt and reached out a hand. “Come, my dear, I want to show you something.”
Mercy glanced up at the proffered hand. “We really do not have time to tarry, sister.”
“Do as I say,” Freya said gently.
“What is there to show me in an ugly field of dirt and potatoes. Have you struck gold?” She laughed, but took Freya’s hand and let herself be pulled to her feet.
“You must promise you will tell no one!” Freya said.
Mercy snickered. “Why do you look so grave?”
Freya patted Mercy’s shoulder. “You mustn’t be frightened.”
“You know me. I have seen it all. Nothing frightens me anymore.”
Freya brought her friend to the border of the field, where the trees would hide them from prying eyes. She made sure no one was near. First, she had to create a pocket to enclose them. She murmured the right words, and she felt the shift and electricity fill the air. A euphoric feeling swept over her, making her entire body tingle.
The wind swept around them, singing through the trees, raising dirt in the field. It was as if a hundred invisible hands had set to work. The spuds lifted from the earth, filling the baskets, plopping into the bins. Time leaped from one moment to the next, jarring and jagged. The bins overflowed. The wind stopped, and the dust settled.
Freya clapped the dirt off her hands. “Tell me that was much easier!” She smiled at Mercy, who was ogling her.
“It isn’t possible!” she said, breathless. She ran to the edge of the field, Freya right behind her. Mercy fell to her knees, throwing her arms over a bin. “A miracle!”
“Yes!” said Freya.
Mercy gazed at Freya in awe. “You are a witch!”
“There’s no such thing!” Freya said.
Mercy grinned. “Of course there isn’t!”
Next came the blackberries. Rather than getting nicked and bloody hands from the thorns, the berries plucked themselves off the brambles, falling into the girls’ baskets. Five lovely jars of preserves were made in the blink of an eye. The house was cleaned, spotless, and ordered within minutes without either of them lifting a finger. After dinner they put the children to bed, and once the entire family had turned in, Mercy and Freya whispered back and forth from their rope beds in the hall. Mercy wondered at the multitudes they could do in so little time and with nearly no effort on Freya’s part.
“We mustn’t get carried away,” Freya warned. “We need to continue doing things the old way. We cannot get caught. You know what I am now, Mercy, and you know what they do to people like me. They will hang me if they knew the truth. They say this is the devil’s work, but I am certain—deep in my heart—it isn’t.”
“I don’t believe one word of it either, Freya. It is God working through you. God making miracles through my dearest friend.” She reached for Freya’s hand. “Does it make you weary?”
“Quite the contrary. It feels marvelous!”
The girls were quiet for a while.
“I cannot sleep,” said Mercy.
“Me neither!” There was so much more Freya wanted to show Mercy. It was nice to no longer have to hide for a change. An idea came to her and she turned to her side to face her friend with a dreamy expression.
“What?” Mercy lifted her head.
Freya’s bare feet landed on the flagstone floor, and the bed swung as she sat upright. “There is something else I must show you. Quickly!”
The girls went quietly, careful not to wake the house. Barefoot in their linen shifts, their hair loose, they set out for the woods, but not before Freya grabbed a broom on the way out.
They flew over Salem, the cobalt night glittering with stars.
chapter twenty
Raise the Roof
It was barn-raising day on the Putnam farm, a merry occasion. Nearly the entire community of Salem Village had come to help. The men hammered away. Soon they would lift the structure. They had been working since dawn. Eventually, everyone would cheer, and then they would break to eat, drink, and mingle. Once the food was served and the shadows grew longer and the villagers let down their guards, no longer watching one another like hawks, perhaps Freya could find Nate and slip off to the woods with him, unnoticed. His words echoed in her head again: “I have harbored a deep desire to be with you, to know you…” She trembled at the thought of knowing him and wondered how soon they would be married.
/> For now she and Mercy helped set up the row of tables in the shade of the trees at the edge of the forest, where the goodwives of the village, along with household servants, would present their specialties—a village potluck. Roasted pig. Venison with maple syrup. Pork, apricot, and prune pie. Beef stew with peas, carrots, potatoes in a thick, sweet wine sauce. Stuffed fowl. A cornucopia. To drink, plenty of ale, cider, and wine from Ingersoll’s Tavern.
Freya arranged the bread she had baked, all the while stealing glimpses of Nate out on the barn’s foundation, where he and James labored. The front of Nate’s shirt was damp. His hair fell over his face as he swung the hammer. She imagined what it might feel like to run her hands beneath his shirt, to feel the hidden strength and hollows of his body.
He had not once looked in her direction, almost as if he were avoiding her. But surely he could show his affection now that he had asked for consent and she had given her hand. Then again, Mr. Putnam said no one was to know, so maybe he was only following his dictate.
Still, Freya was suddenly irritated by everything—the smell of food, her tight, heavy bodice, the incessant chatter of women gossiping around her, talking unkindly behind each other’s backs while smiling in each other’s faces. She felt hot and itchy, damp under the arms. She batted at a fly buzzing in her face.
Reverend Parris’s Caribbean slave, Tituba, walked over, and Freya recognized her from the meetinghouse, standing with the reverend’s children in the gallery. She handed Freya a fan made from leaves. “Something we do in Barbados. The leaves are not as big here as they are on my island. Here they are rather small and sad. But it will keep you cool and scare away meddlesome flies.”