Fiendish

  I shook my head, not knowing how to make her see. “It got so wild and awful all at once. It was like it came at him, like it had a personal grudge. Is that how things started at the reckoning?”

  Shiny gazed back at me. She was sitting very still, like she could hardly dare to breathe. “I don’t know. I don’t know what goes on down in Wixby Hollow, or how it works. For all I know, they’ve got craft lighting up everywhere and monstrous things down there all the time, but that’s just one more reason you should not go around messing with it!”

  “If that’s true, though—if the craft is just lighting up every which way—maybe it was just being how it always is. I mean, if it doesn’t have to follow any kind of natural laws, how can anyone really say what’s normal?”

  Even to myself, though, I sounded like I was trying too hard to convince someone.

  “I don’t know much about the hollow,” Shiny said again, and she closed her eyes when she said it. “But the kind of thing you’re talking about sounds pretty far from normal. I’m pretty sure what you’re talking about can’t come to any good.”

  FIREFLIES

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The farther along it got into evening, the clearer it was that there would be no supper, and neither Shiny nor Myloria seemed very motivated to do anything about that.

  I’d just gotten out a box of Bisquick and was reading the directions to fix myself some pancakes when I heard the roar of a familiar engine. I stepped onto the porch just in time to see Fisher’s Trans Am come skimming onto Weeping Road and scream up to the house in a long rooster tail of dust. Then it cut off, and the yard was so quiet that the silence seemed to be a solid thing, like it was clapping in on my ears.

  I sat down on the sagging front steps and watched him get out of the car, trying to look however I would if I hadn’t seen him make dogwood flowers grow from nothing or watched him pass out in the road or seen him without his shirt on, bleeding all over the bed.

  He came up the steps to me, moving stiffly, but looking better than he had. The way he held his arm close against his chest, though, made me think he was not yet fully recovered. He stood beside me where I sat, but didn’t say anything, even though I waited what felt like a year.

  Finally, I sighed and looked up at him. His back was broad, lumpy along one shoulder, like maybe he’d bandaged himself up, but the bandages didn’t fit too well under his clothes.

  Now that I knew the shape of the tower, I could picture the line of it. I sat with my arms around my knees, tracing it in my head, the way it narrowed to a jaggy point at the back of his neck.

  He glanced down at me, like he could feel my eyes on him. “You studying me like that because you’ve got something on your mind?”

  “Yeah, I do.” The steps creaked under his boots and I shaded my eyes. “You’re supposed to be home in bed, working on not getting yourself killed.”

  “Well, I don’t do so great with sitting around the house. I just needed to get out.”

  I pointed to his arm, the way he held it awkwardly against his chest. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, dropping down onto the steps next to me. The nearness of him was delicious, and I wanted to reach over and touch the edge of his T-shirt because it looked like it might be soft and I wanted to find out, and because he was close enough to touch.

  “You look like you got some rest, at least,” I said finally, when I’d been staring at his T-shirt long enough that I had to say something.

  He nodded. His face was tired, but his color was better and the dark circles around his eyes were gone. “I would have got more, except Isola can’t stay put. Kept me up, wandering around the house all day. Swear she must’ve gone up and down that hall a hundred times.”

  I remembered Isola that morning, her eyes bright and hungry like she was trying to study the truth right out of my face.

  “You were in pretty bad shape. Maybe she was worried.”

  He shook his head. “You got all my sheets and stuff in the wash. And she didn’t say anything, except to get after me just now when I was leaving, for having a girl over past nine. Sometimes I think I’m about to lose my damn mind, living with her.”

  I thought of Myloria, with her vague ways and her empty eyes, like she was always looking past me.

  “It might not be so bad,” I said. “To have someone pay attention or try and take care of you. She’s mean, maybe, but I don’t think she’s stupid.”

  He glanced at me, and his eyes were exhausted. “Maybe, but that sure doesn’t make her any more fun to deal with.” Then he jerked his head toward the back of the house and pulled himself to his feet. “Come on, let’s go for a walk.”

  I almost asked him again if he was feeling all right, but let it go. We climbed down off the porch and headed out past the barn. Behind the house, the ground sloped away to a little fenced-in garden and a wooden shed with a wire run full of chickens. Farther down, a rickety pump house leaned awkwardly, and beyond that, a tire swing hung from one of the willows that stood along a bend of the creek. Old pieces of broken farm equipment were scattered here and there, sinking slowly into the ground. A hay rake sat in the shade near the swing, looking like a giant mouth of bent, rusted teeth. It was strange to be reminded that this land used to be good for something besides rot and sadness and ruin.

  We’d only gone down past the edge of the yard when Fisher stopped and took a deep breath. He was still trying to act fine, but I could see the first strands of bright, electric red pulsing out of him, shining ugly into the dusk.

  “Just stop working so hard to seem like it doesn’t hurt,” I said when I’d got tired of pretending I didn’t see the way he clenched his jaw. “It’s not like I can’t tell.”

  He didn’t answer or argue, just closed his eyes, cradling his arm against his chest.

  “How bad is it?”

  He laughed. “I think I can feel every damn muscle and nerve stitching itself back together.”

  I picked a broken stick from out of the weeds and swung it, knocking the seeds off an early milkweed. “You shouldn’t have come out here, then. You should have stayed home to heal up.”

  He gave me a tired, rueful smile. “I don’t know much about how that works. I’ve never really had to worry about it before. Last night, though. Last night was bad. It hurt so much it was hard even to breathe.”

  “I know,” I said.

  He made a little gesture with his good hand, like he was drawing someplace that only he could see, and wouldn’t look at me. “Every second, it was me deciding to take the next breath, and knowing if I let myself, I could pass out and then nothing would hurt anymore.”

  I dug around in the weeds with the end of the stick. “Why didn’t you then?”

  “It wouldn’t have been passing out.” He stared out into the field, full of tall grass and morning glories. “It would have been dying. So I just breathed, and worked really hard at not dying.”

  Suddenly, I could almost feel the weight of the songs I’d sung him, the way his hand felt in mine.

  “What happened to us yesterday?” I said.

  The question seemed too small to conjure up what it had been like to see the world come undone, ready to chew up him and me and anything else it came across.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “The hollow kind of lost its mind, I guess. I mean, it always sort of changes moods along with me, but not like that. The dirt there works in ways it never does out in the regular world, but that’s the first time I’ve seen it do anything like that.”

  I took a deep breath and tossed away the stick. “I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen something like it.”

  Fisher glanced at me sharply. “What are you talking about? Something here, out in the regular world?”

  “Not any kind of fiend or hell dog,” I said. “But Shiny and I found something in
the creek the other day. This monster-fish with a whole bunch of wrong, scary teeth. She cut it apart and we buried it, but I don’t think that will really make a difference if there are more of them.”

  “I don’t know what’s happening,” Fisher said. “I don’t know what this is.”

  “Dangerous,” I said.

  He laughed low and dry in his throat. “Yeah, that.” Then his face went stony again. “I keep trying to figure out what that was yesterday, and I can’t even start to make sense of it. All I can think is, what if that’s just what the hollow’s like now? It’s the only place I ever really feel okay, and what if this means I can’t even go there anymore?”

  The edge in his voice was something like pain.

  “It isn’t safe there,” I said.

  “I know—I know it’s not, but maybe that’s why I like it. Or part, anyway. Town is safe. For me, everything is safe.”

  I nodded. I didn’t like to point it out, but there were some things about town that seemed pretty far from safe.

  Fisher was walking faster, kicking at a pokeweed bush as we passed, and now the words were spilling out. “When Isola’s mad at me, sometimes she tells me I shouldn’t even be here. That the only place for me is down in the hollow. She says it to be mean, but the thing is, it’s true. It’s the only place I really . . . belong. It’s kind of amazing there.”

  I looked out at the empty pastures, at every tree and flower and blade of grass, at the muddy patches by the cow-stream, the crickets and frogs rustling around in the ditch. “But that’s not so rare or—or so special. Everything’s amazing!”

  Fisher didn’t answer, but he looked like he was thinking about that, or thinking about something. Whatever was on his mind did not look particularly comfortable.

  We crossed the little dirt bridge that ran over the ditch, and opened the gate into the back pasture. We walked out through the hay and sat on the trunk of a fallen tree. We were close enough that I could feel the warmth of him in the air against my skin, but not quite so close that we were touching. Around us, the fireflies were coming out, lighting up around us in the grass, tiny and bright.

  “It’s hard to be around you,” he said, and his voice sounded so strange.

  I let out a crowing sound, almost like a laugh, but not. “Then tell me to go away, if I’m so awful. Or at least, don’t come over to go walking.”

  “It’s hard to be around you,” he said again, and he said it with his face turned away and his shoulders hunched. “But you’re not awful. I just—I always want to tell you everything.”

  “Then why don’t you tell me?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not . . . it’s not easy.”

  “Things don’t have to be easy,” I said.

  Fisher was a silhouette against the sky. He was leaning forward, looking out over the pasture with his hands clasped between his knees. His profile was wistful in the dark, and suddenly, he didn’t look fierce or stoic or defiant. He looked tired.

  His hair was dark and shaggy, hanging his face, but his skin seemed to shine up out of the dusk, brightening the line of his nose and mouth and chin. He looked forlorn against the sky and I watched him, waiting for something to change. For him to stop looking so unbearably lonely. It seemed like maybe if you had crooked blood and a secret world and an iron skin, you were always lonely.

  “Fisher?”

  “What?”

  “Are we friends yet?”

  He laughed softly. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess we are.”

  “Fisher?”

  He turned toward me and I kissed him. Not the way the magazines or movies talked about, but awkward and too fast. His mouth was warm and soft against mine and then when he made a little hurt sound, I pulled back.

  For awhile, we just sat like that, side by side, quiet and still in the middle of the field. My cheeks were getting hot, so I stared off someplace that wasn’t him. The other day, I’d made up my mind in ten seconds that I was going to kiss him, in some far-off make-believe way that didn’t feel real or mean anything. Doing it though, actually doing it, was so much more scary than anything I’d wished for or imagined or bragged about to Shiny.

  When I glanced over at him, he was just looking out across the empty pasture at some far-off spot in the grass.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  He squinted at me and his voice was hoarse. “How did you know I wanted you to?”

  “Wanted me to kiss you? I didn’t.”

  He swallowed like he was having a hard time catching his breath. “And you just decided to do it anyway?”

  “Well, yeah. It was what I wanted, and you looked like you needed it.”

  He reached for me, grabbing me around my waist and pulling me toward him. His hurt arm was shaking and he rested his hand against my hip. His other hand was flat on my back, pressing me hard against his chest. I could feel his heartbeat through his shirt and he was kissing me like it was the only real thing, and there was no field, no fireflies, no dusk. Like he could breathe me in and there wouldn’t be him and me at all anymore, just one solid thing. I put my arms around his neck, pulling him closer.

  His teeth knocked against mine, pinching my lip and I gasped. “Ow.”

  “Sorry.” He pulled back, shaking his head. “Sorry, I don’t have a lot of practice at this kind of thing.”

  The way he looked at me was almost shy, like he was worried what I would think.

  “No, it was fine.” I took a deep breath and couldn’t stop the spinning feeling, like everything was full of a pale, quiet light and the world was about to fall away. “It was good.”

  He reached for me with his good hand, touching the side of my face. “I could do it again.”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  LILIES

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The thrill of kissing Fisher was still zinging around in my head the next morning. He’d kissed me in the field, and walking home, and then again on Myloria’s porch, and one last time as I was letting myself into the house.

  I caught myself going over it again and again, till I had to stop for fear of wearing out the memory before I was done with it.

  The day was long and aimless, like all the other days at the Blackwood house, and with no chores or errands or appointments, time seemed stuck in a way it never had when I was little.

  By the time the sun started to get low, I’d had about enough.

  “Hey,” I said to Shiny, who was sprawled out on the bed, working on her witch cards again. “I’m going into town to see the fair. You should come if you want.”

  She rolled her eyes like that was about the most worthless thing she’d ever heard, but as soon as I left the bedroom, she followed me out.

  We were in the front hall, getting our shoes, when Myloria came wandering in after us.

  “I hate to be a bother,” she said, “But I have to just ask. You are not intending to be selling any kind of craft with that Dalton girl, are you?”

  Shiny straightened up, holding a boot in each hand. “Rae is not ‘that Dalton girl.’ She’s my friend, and she does honest work for honest money. Don’t pretend like you know anything about that.”

  Myloria’s mouth got very thin. “This is an upright family, and we don’t need to resort to charms and snake oil to make our living.”

  “We need to be able to afford dish soap or milk! We need to be able to buy groceries.”

  Myloria blinked and looked away. “Well, I can’t help it if you want to lower yourself to tricks, but don’t you go giving people the wrong idea about us.”

  Shiny snorted. “Like that we survive on possums and live in a decrepit old ruin like a couple of crazy people? No, we certainly wouldn’t want to give them that idea!”

  With a huff, she rammed her feet into her boots and stalked out onto the porch.

  I stood in the hall
across from Myloria, waiting for her to turn away or else to scold me too, but she didn’t move or say a word. When we looked at each other, I could see a broken heart inside her but not any way to do a thing about it, and after a second, I followed Shiny out.

  On the porch, I was greeted by Shiny’s back. She was leaning on the railing, under the long row of wind chimes, glaring out into the yard.

  “Do you think we could stop and invite Davenport to come with us?” I said after what felt like forever. I had a feeling I knew what she’d say, but it was worth asking, and I was tired of waiting for her to turn around.

  Shiny pushed herself away from the railing and reached for a mangy broom that was leaning by the door. “Are you serious? The girl’s a straight-up weirdo.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “Shiny, you have to start being friendly to people sometime. You can’t just hang out with me and Rae.”

  She pushed her hair back from her face and hooked it behind her ears, shaking her head. “I can’t even believe you sometimes. Here you come, sassing around like some ridiculous little Pollyanna, like you can help everyone sort out all their problems.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Shiny affected a high, babyish voice. “Oh, let’s invite Davenport—never mind that she’s nearly a goddamn mute! Let’s run around with that Fisher boy and teach him how to be civilized, even though he’s the devil on wheels!”

  “That’s not what this is. Don’t be stupid.”

  “Yes, it is. You’re just going around giving your time and your goodwill to people who don’t deserve it. No one around here wants our help!”

  “How do you know they don’t? And anyway, what have you got against Davenport? That she’s got a crazy daddy? That’s not even fair. That’s like blaming you for Myloria.”

  The look Shiny gave me was terrible. “He is nothing like Myloria. People in the Willows are supposed to stick together, but at the reckoning, it was her dad right there in front, tying rags and lighting bottles.”