Four Times Blessed

  Chapter 26

  I step into the airfield, knowing Lium’s somewhere back in the trees. Some seagulls squawk out of the grass.

  I gasp.

  “The chickens!” I slap my forehead, drop my bookbag, turn and sprint. I pass Lium at the glacier rock.

  “I’ll be right back!”

  Hearing the base’s bells toll quarter-of, I streak into the backyard.

  “Oh, my babies, I’m so sorry!” I tell the chickens.

  They cluck madly inside the coop. I slip through the light cage door and they flock to my feet. I scoop up some feed and douse them with it, which they don’t really seem to mind.

  “There you go, all happy and fed. Good chickens. Hi Alberta. Cleo. Maxine. How you girls doing today? Sorry I forgot you.” I dust my hands off on my skirt. Then, realizing what I’ve just done, I dust off my skirt as well.

  I really need to start carrying around one of those sticky roller things or something.

  “So. Talking to chickens. I’d say I didn’t cut you out from that buoy fast enough, only I’m beginning to suspect this was always normal for you.” I turn, unsurprised.

  “I was just apologizing.”

  “To chickens.”

  “Yes.”

  “How come?”

  I sigh. “When I was running around this morning, I forgot to feed them. They must have been hungry and wondering for hours, poor babies.”

  “Well, they look fine now. Do you usually feed the chickens?”

  “Yes, every day.”

  “Every day, you go outside, by yourself, and stand with your back to the woods?”

  I purse my lips. “Yes.”

  He can’t believe me, I think, because he’s speechless.

  “I do other stuff, too,” I blurt. “You should maybe come over earlier.”

  I put the door back so it doesn’t make a sound. I tiptoe by the man rather briskly, and skitter back through the undergrowth that hides the start of the trail.

  Lium mumbles to himself the whole way back, despite the nervous pace I set. He’s in really good shape. I wonder if he exercises when he’s not with me. Because I know mostly everything else he does during the day. I wonder if my Uncle Groton asked him to escort me around so someone would always be keeping an eye on him. I wonder if Lium’s thought of that. I’m surprised when I think the answer is yes. I wonder if that means he’s smarter than me.

  He takes a wrong turn onto a deer path and I decide that’s a no.

  At the rock, I give him my most innocent, sweetest expression ever, and quickly kiss him on the cheek. Then I run.

  After a long morning of listening to piano output-sprinkler twenty-four j is clogged, and a longer afternoon of conducting piano input-I think the military sector accountants sent me their payroll, I cross the airfield and step into the shade. Both Cassie and Lium are waiting for me on the rock.

  I heard them laughing before I saw them, but when they see me, they stop. Cassie, who I decide is much better to focus on right now, looks disapprovingly at the books in my arms. What? I really need them.

  My final audio boards are coming up in December and I’m still not one hundred percent on clarinets. On all the practice tests, I’ve been getting about halfway through when my ears get criss-crossed so I check my visual displays but then the colors, lines, and frequencies are so messed up with all the other instrument lines that I get really antsy and click the New Question button.

  Then I usually think of a solution.

  And yesterday, the little flap on my meal bar wrapper told me Tip number thirty-seven fifty percent of M.D.S. Audio Board questions are NOT multiple choice.

  I stuffed the remainder of the bar in my pocket, and hiked up to Resources.

  “Hey, Cassie, how you doing?”

  “Good. You’re in trouble.”

  “Lium can’t put me in trouble. He’s not in charge of me.” Or maybe she’s talking about the lab. But she doesn’t know about the focus room. So how…

  “Chipmunks were talking about it.”

  “Mm. Ok, Cassie. So, what’s for dinner? I’m starving.” I start down the path. Hear them crunch along behind me. One set of crunching is a little more emphatic.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” My cousin huffs up beside me, so neither of us can walk facing forward without sidelining a trunk. Not a comfortable way to go down a trail.

  Frustrated, she says, “Chicken is for supper. Because you’re in lots of trouble.”

  I pull my skirt from the sticky fingers of a bush.

  Strange. We hardly ever eat our chickens, except on special occasions. And my being in trouble isn’t usually one of them.

  “Cassie? Do you know why I’m in trouble?”

  “You killed the chickens.”

  “What? No, I didn’t.”

  I fed them. I remembered them and I fed them.

  “Yeah, you did. You cursed them. You put a curse on all Zizi’s chickens and they died. Are you a witch?”

  “No, I’m not a witch, Cassandra. That’s not a nice thing to say. Lium?” I try, but he’s decided to be unhelpful.

  “I wish you were a witch,” Cassie continues, so wistful. Oh, Cassie. I could kiss you and strangle you.

  “And why is that?” I ask.

  “Because then you can grant me wishes.”

  “I think those are genies.”

  “No. I mean witches.”

  “Are you sure you don’t mean genies? You know, the guys in the lamps that you rub and then you get three wishes.”

  “It’s not just genies that give wishes. Wishes are magic. And witches have magic. So witches give wishes. Lots of them. Way more than a puny little genie.”

  “Singular is jinn.”

  We then of course have to debate the average size of one. I end up loosing. There’s no arguing with Cassie. That’s why I should have known better and listened to her when she told me I killed all the stupid chickens and I was in trouble.

  When we walk in the door, my zizi is waiting. For me, it turns out. And she is not happy. Nope, she’s in the back, steaming like the five roasted chickens just coming off of the spits, ready to join the others on the counter. My books are suddenly much too cumbersome. I place them on a table.

  Then I walk over to her and she tells me to go wait on the back porch so I do.

  She leaves me out there for a while, which is petty, but maybe she’s just too busy to talk to me. It seems that she’s invited the entire island over to come eat my victims.

  “Crusa, what in the name of the forefathers were you thinking?”

  “What? I don’t know how it happened, I swear. I fed them like I always do and then I went to work.”

  “You fed them from the wrong bag, my silly girl! You fed them out of the bag of ice-melting crystals that was out there. Didn’t you notice the difference?”

  Oh. No. That’s awful. I’m awful. I just poisoned all our poor little poultry to death. I have nothing to say for myself. Except that I feel sick.

  “We have ice-melting crystals? Still?”

  “Yes! I work so hard to save them, and then you go and throw them all over the yard for the dumb chickens!”

  “I didn’t mean to, Zizi! I was in a rush.”

  This leads to a lecture that would earn my aunt a Great Proficient. By the end, I feel completely defeated.

  “I’m sorry, Zizi. I didn’t mean to.” I wipe the infernal tears escaping down my face.

  She closes her eyes. She’s gotten older without my noticing. So many whispers across her grey cheeks. I’m so sorry.

  “Just promise you’ll be more careful.”

  “I will.”

  She sighs and gives me a tight hug. A cross between I-love-you and you-make-my-life-so-difficult.

  “Good. Now go inside and eat. The only way I’ll still be mad is if you don’t eat.”

  “Yes, Zizi.”

  I’m not hungry at all, but I put some shreds of dark me
at on my plate with some potatoes and greens and go sit down. I poke at it, the noise of the packed house pressing around me like I’m sitting on the beach with my eyes closed. Everybody loud and full and having a jolly old time. Except for me, of course.

  “Hey. You gonna eat that?” I lift my head. My brother is there, sitting next to Cassie.

  “Camillo! I haven’t seen you in forever! Help yourself,” I spring over the table and throttle him. He makes a choking sound but does hug me back. I’ve missed him. I sit back down and push my plate over. They both start picking off it with my fork and their fingers.

  After a while, I sigh. They look up. Cassie spears a piece of golden meat and holds it up to my mouth. I frown. Milo gets up and pinches my cheeks together and crushes my arm so Cassie can pop it in through the hole. I close my mouth and resume frowning, but it’s all watering on the inside. It’s really good. I swallow.

  “Maxine,” I whimper.

  This brings on another round of the tag-team feeding effort, and they are even less gentle this time. Milo says it’s payback for the time I convinced him to eat mud and leaf ravioli. I ask how bad it could’ve been. I sprinkled some good fresh cheese on it.

  At some point, Lium and Hale come over. The boys all shake hands like they do while I blush. It’s really embarrassing having a constant guard to witness you doing things as stupid as wiping an entire species off of the face of an island.

  Luckily, both Lium and Cassie are talkers, and they seem to appreciate that characteristic in one another, so they amble along in conversation while Hale says nothing and Milo finishes my dinner, and I stare at my brother to try to pinpoint what’s different. And slow my pulse since I can see he’s unhurt. Once, Cassie even makes him laugh.

  Whatever she’s been doing, she’s taken very good care of him over there. My heart aches when I think about how I haven’t been able to help him since he went over there. The best I can do for him is to stay away. Let everyone on the other side of the island forget he has anything to do with me.

  They despise me, that side of the family, starting when I didn’t go back to them after my mother died. She was one of them, actually, but I was little and my zizi came into Camillo and my bedroom with the priest and my Uncle Groton and Angie was there, too, and the priest, a visiting one with a singsong accent, he asked me who I wanted to live with.

  I couldn’t answer him, my throat was closed, but my zizi knelt in front of me and told them to let her ask, she said you want to live with me, tell them, it’s what she wants. And I sobbed hot messy tears and snot and said yes. She hugged me, and Milo, too, as he agreed with whatever I said, like I knew he would, and she told me not to cry.

  So I abandoned them and now I’ll bring my groom’s wealth to the family that stole me, as they insist. And killed my mother, as it’s passed in whispers or sometimes shouted. But Cassie, being who she is, she made them listen.

  We sit around with cups of tea after the chickens are stripped to bones and the meat is packed away into the basement’s cooler and the bones are saved for broth making.

  We listen to my uncles play their fiddles and guitars. They entice Milo to play with them. It’s nice. Warm and too stuffy. Someone opens a window and a moist breeze washes over my shoulders every once in a while. This air isn’t good for lamps and candles, my zizi declares.

  But the sunset stretches on and on, so soon with the music the floorboards shudder with dancing. The sharp, rich, rosy smell of roasted chicken heavy over everything.

  Cassie and I get up and drag Camillo away, into the winding lines and circles. It feels good to dance, so I stretch just a little farther, spin a little faster, strike a little harder, to make the heat and the tingling more intense. My body loves it. I wonder if it’s latent effects of the drugs.

  I drop bits of myself around the hall and they glimmer and flare like the candles would have, while the sunset courses through the floundering net that I’ve become. Cassie takes my arms and we swirl around together, giving ourselves as wild things in the night.

  After so many songs, the room is black and blue and the ocean air has crept up, rinsing out some of the chickeniness, thank the forefathers. I touch Cassie’s face and it’s hot as metal on the stove. Her hair is frizzy and wild. I’m sure I look the same only worse.

  “Drinks,” she fumbles into me.

  Camillo and I pull her lolling arms and legs of the dance floor, our laughter making us weak. We get water and stand at a window.

  “So, why are you here?” I ask my brother.

  “Ouch. I thought you loved me.” He smirks into his mug.

  I kick him in the shin.

  “Ow! Crusa, Jesus.”

  “Please, I don’t even have shoes on.”

  He makes like he’s going to punch me but I dodge him. He shrugs, “Zizi wanted me to.”

  “Oh, so you’ll come for Zizi, but not for me?” I tease.

  “Well…yeah.”

  I do punch him this time.

  “Hey. Would you like to dance?”

  That’s a funny question. I twist my brother’s wrist until he gives me my fist back and turn to see who said that.

  It’s Hale. I make sure there’s nobody behind me. Nope, just the window.

  “Do I want to dance?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Um, sure. I like dancing, thank you,” I say because I can’t say anything else, really. The tall boy’s arm reaches down far enough to take my fingers. He walks off, so I patter off with him. I make a confused face at Milo, who waves. Useless brother of mine.

  Hale and I join a pair of lines as a new song strikes up. A fast one, thank the ancestors in heaven.

  I move through the movements, imagining them more than doing them. I’m too busy keeping an eye on Hale. He dances like he finds it annoying. Which makes me wonder why he’s doing it at all.

  He speaks on the downbeat.

  “You like my brother.”

  “Yes,” I say, and pretend I’m not suspicious. And why is everyone so suddenly concerned over who I like? I like everyone. Ever since my zizi got ahold of me.

  “You’d make a nice sister-in-law. You should marry him.” Sweet forefathers. That was a very strange compliment if ever I did hear one. My academy instructors were creative, so I’d thought I had. But they never danced while they complimented, which I think adds that little something. And sure I like Lium, but that does not signal I should go off and marry him. Hale’s argument is flawed.

  “Thank you, Hale, I’m sure you’d make a wonderful brother-in-law, yourself. But I’m already marrying someone. Andrew, if you remember him.” I spin away and back, knocking into him.

  “You never know,” the boy shrugs, which as a side benefit gets me off him. We both feel much better. He continues, “If you do like him, like you said, you should just change your mind. Nothing’s stopping you.”

  “I’m afraid it is,” I try to joke. He’s not amused. “I’m very happy in my arrangement,” I give him instead, my standard for those who can’t comprehend it. How I’ve prepared for this marriage since before I can remember. Had a long time to get used to it. Getting ready to be married is a lot of work, people don’t realize. And this dumb boy thinks you can just run off and do it… Oh, and if this is Lium getting his brother to tag-team me on his little let’s run off baby because for some reason I’ve decided to convince myself I’m fascinated by you and we’ll have a good time until I get bored or captured by pirates again campaign, then I’m going to be really ticked.

  But I don’t think that’s it. Occam’s Razor. More likely, as I know as well as anyone, family members’ brains just tend to work alike.

  “Jesus, honey. You don’t have to be… so harsh. My brother would make a good husband. Just do what you want, and who cares?” I’ve never heard Hale talk so much in my life. He doesn’t smell like alcohol. We have to split up for the dance, but I rejoin him, reluctantly, on the other side.

  I try to be nice.

&n
bsp; “Your brother’s young. He doesn’t want to be married.”

  “You do.”

  “Yes, but I’m not him.”

  “No, you’re way too scared stiff to be him.” He looks down on me severely, and I flush.

  He says, “My brother is a waking nightmare. You need to stop playing with him.”

  I stumble. Hale clutches me under the armpits a foot off the ground, and waits until I dangle more upright.

  Readjusting my top, I tell him, “I’m not playing with him. We’re friends.” I lean closer, but find it’s like sniffing spoiled meat, “I never told him I wanted to marry him.”

  “He needs to be married.”

  “So pick him out another girl, great grandmothers, Hale. Try one of my cousins. There’s plenty and they’re all very pretty. Although, I have to say…I can’t see him liking you doing that.”

  “That’s what I said, and I knew he wouldn’t like it, but I didn’t care. See how that works?”

  I roll my eyes. He goes on, “But then, I thought about it, and I think someone like you would be good for him. Make him tame.”

  I start. I’m blushing.

  Neither of us talk. Instead, we dance in an awkward silence where we can hear each other’s every movement. I notice my hands are hot and sweaty. His are dry and that smug upper lip tells me he’s noticed this, too.

  Scathingly, I say, “I’m not some wild-brother tamer.”

  I’m almost disappointed as the song ends, because now I have to rush to get out all the mean things I want to say.

  “I’m the daughter of a well-respected family, who needs to marry a very specific kind of man. I’m sorry but it’s true.”

  It is. My family, the island, they need trade. Money, goods, fresh blood. All reasons much bigger than me. And this is the biggest connection my family has made in a while, lucky me and my good timing at being born and female.

  I possibly take out my frustration on poor Hale.

  “I’m also a highly trained military specialist whose go-to method of taming people is through the coordination of aerial attacks. If you want that, then please, do ask me. But don’t tell me to tame your brother,” I cross my arms. “And don’t tell me to marry him. You don’t tell me what to do.”

  It takes me a beat to recover from saying that. When I do, I’m very calm. Rational. “He’s fine. He doesn’t need me for anything.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  I gape.

  “Sometimes, I think I’ll kill him,” Hale shares, perfectly at ease. I think I’m not so at ease with his level of ease.

  “Then, I change my mind,” he shrugs.

  “Well…good. You, keep on doing that.”

  He makes a too-innocent face. It’s creepy, as I’ve never seen him so animated. “I’ll try. It would help if I had you as a sister-in-law, though.”

  My heart’s the only thing that moves. I want to yell at him some more but my head’s all sparkly.

  “Hey, you two. My turn.”

  “I don’t know, we’re having a good time. Why don’t you go ask someone else?” I can’t help that my eyes widen in horror. Lium claps Hale on the shoulder and shoves him.

  Hale takes it well.

  He looks at his brother with the slinking gaze that’s woken up inside him tonight. I’m beginning to think it’s his natural look. Probably born wearing it. Probably totally freaked out the midwife.

  Then Lium’s arms are around me, and he feels just like I remember. It soothes me, and my muscles unlock. It makes me a little lightheaded, so it’s good he’s there. He must have been tense today, too, because I notice the little natural movements as they enter bit by bit into his dance. I try to take a step back but he doesn’t seem to notice because his arm won’t give. I arch back.

  “Happy to see me?” He smiles down. He’s very pleased with himself.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “What’s with your brother?”

  “I don’t know, he’s been getting weirder ever since your uncle got ahold of him. No offense.”

  “None taken.” My family is weird.

  “So, who’s the next livestock you plan to kill? I hope it’s a cow. I miss beef.”

  My mouth pops open. Then closed. I have a mouthful of air.

  I groan. Hide my face.

  “At least they didn’t put you in the stocks.”

  “Those stocks on the green aren’t real, you know. They’re a historically accurate reproduction,” I tell him miserably.

  “Are they now?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s too bad. I was planning on stuffing Hale in them later.”

  I laugh, which is terrible.

  “I would understand perfectly if a flock of chickens murdered me in my sleep tonight. And then cooked me on a spit.”

  Because that’s what I feel like is happening right now. Maybe the chicken spirits have already started their plan of vengeance.

  “I can always sleep with you. I’ll murder those chickens so bad they’d wish it was you doing it.”

  “Um, that’s ok. My zizi would hear you.” The music’s started again, but all we really do is adjust so we can hear each other over it.

  “She can hear that good?”

  “Oh, yeah. She’s part bat.”

  He’s not convinced.

  “At some point, humans and bats had the same common ancestor, so whatever was used to make bats bats and humans humans came from the same critter. And my theory is, that whatever was used to make bat hearing got passed down to her, also. So yes. She really is part bat.”

  “And what part are you, little Crus?”

  “I don’t know. Hopefully not chicken.” At that point, I trip on my own two feet again. Which is awesome. I don’t know how I was ever able to place in figure skating. The other girls must have been awful.

  Lium takes the opportunity to tip me into a nearby circle of dancers. I’m short of breath when the song ends. That last bit of running around was fun, actually. I forget what we were talking about. I’m about to tell Lium I really enjoyed the dance.

  “Come eat dessert, people!” yells my zizi.

  The musicians go running. We go sit on a windowsill. Even though their maws reach almost to the ceiling, their old lady lips fall low. Sills severe and blackened with mold. I heave myself far enough back so it’s touching my bare legs and not my shorts. I lean back against the screen, hoping the boys nailed it in good this spring.

  It smells so nice. Dust and nighttime leaves.

  “Sometimes I wish this whole island was just mine,” I sigh.

  “What would you do with it, beautiful?” Lium plays along.

  “Nothing. I’d live on it, all by myself. I’d be a crazy hermit, and you could come visit me and you’d find me running around all over the place. Fishing and napping like an old man. Would you like that?”

  “I would,” he tells me. He puts an arm across my waist and rests against the window’s side. We stay like that for a while. Later, when Eleni and Cassie bounce up, people are clearing out. I say goodbye go upstairs with the girls.