ACROSS THE CLEARING, Mary watches the bird, hears the gush of his insides collapsing. Afraid, but too curious to run, she hides behind a large tree. Cheek pressed to bark, she peers carefully around until her own eyes meet those black ones, upon which Mary twitches and then disappears from the black-eyed girl’s view. Mary takes several slow breaths, bracing herself against the tree trunk, observed by a rabbit that has halted his consumption of a sprig of purple flowers. She hisses at the animal, hoping to frighten him away, but the rabbit merely frowns at Mary and continues his meal.
Mary’s mythology is limited. Despite all Lucy has told her of toppling empires, breaking ground, Mary can think of only one use for a child of the forest. Mary wants the black-eyed girl to grant her wishes. Ideally there will be three, a proper number, but Mary is not so proud that she’d falter at just one. And if the girl has only one wish to bestow upon the women of the forest, Mary is determined to make that wish her own.
After all, Mary has the most to wish for. The others in the forest are preserved in youthful beauty, their skin forever smooth and tight, their hair never to gray. Mary remains middle-aged, fleshy and afraid, reminded of mortality even while she knows she’ll live forever. She’d sacrifice the centuries to come for one more year at two and twenty, for invisible pores, for knees that do not creak. She stands frozen between fear and longing, hoping to summon a courage that has failed her before.
Ask, Mary commands herself, go ask it.
It, the wish, or it, the wish-giver? Much easier to crush sympathy with words stripped of their meaning, to be forceful with a creature known as it, rather than she. To use language to devalue a body.
Mary steps out from her shelter, inches toward the girl. She sniffs, and wipes her nose against a sleeve.
One black eye winks.
Mary flees the clearing as quickly as her clumsy feet allow.
14
When we stopped the car at early evening to relieve our bladders by some blossoming elders, Matthew took advantage of my sudden separation from Rafe. Twilight had risen and the sky was now a fading purple-blue, spread wider above us than I had ever seen it, prickled with emergent bursts of stars. The rising land swelled like a mother with child.
“Stop mooning over him,” Matthew said quietly to me once Rafe was out of hearing. “Nothing good will come of it.”
“What do you mean?” I knew exactly what he meant.
“This thing with Rafe. Just end it now.”
“I cannot imagine of what you might be speaking,” I said, thrilled to confirm that our flirtation had been more than just my fancy.
“He can’t touch you. You can’t touch him. What kind of love affair does that make? And besides, he’s so much older. If you have any sense, you’ll stop this before you expose yourself.”
I made a face at Matthew. I did not need his warning to know it was a dangerous game I played with Rafe. I could not hide the desire that emanated off my skin. I wondered how close I could get, how close I could bring him, how much I could make him want my body before pulling it away. Did I want him to reach for me, to press my flesh to his? My body seemed to want it, but my body could never be trusted. My body was a wild thing I had tamed into submission, and yet part of me knew at any second it might lash out, it might fight me. I knew that Matthew was right, and I hated him for it.
And what if the intimacy Rafe wanted was more than the physical? Perhaps, as Matthew claimed, his motivations were not as transparent as they seemed. Perhaps he’d want to know me underneath the skin, the secret of my feelings toward my body, rather than the flesh itself. This thought was even more intimate, even more frightening, than imagining him tangled up inside me. I was caught up in these thoughts as the boys shuffled back into the car, as Matthew tried to turn the engine, as it gave an awful squeak.
“Dammit,” he said softly, one of the few times I had ever heard him swear, “the ignition won’t catch.”
“Let me have at it.” Rafe hopped back out the side and bent down to examine the front of the car, which even in the growing darkness released a visible hiss of steam. Matthew moved to join him, lifted its hood. I scrambled out so as not to be excluded, for the moment setting aside my questions about Rafe.
The various gears and wires that comprised the car’s engine looked to me like a monster, one who’d come out at the wrong end of a fight, with small steel grommets freckling its complexion, hair like oily gray noodles, big black bulging eyes. I reached out to touch it.
“Careful,” said Rafe, his arm stopping mine. He’d only touched my shirtsleeve, but the pressure of his palm made me shiver.
“I see the problem, I think,” Matthew said, brushing his hair back from his brow, leaving a small streak of grease across his forehead. He frowned and bent over the engine, his torso disappearing into the monster’s maw.
“We should call for a mechanic,” said Rafe, “get it towed.”
“We’ve been out of range of mobile service for the past hour.” Matthew’s voice echoed from the inside of the car. He resurfaced to cough loudly, then dove back into the wreckage.
“I’ll walk back to the turnoff for the town we passed,” said Rafe. “If they don’t have someone there who can help us, I can at the very least ask to use a phone.” He turned to look at me. “Maisie, why don’t you come with me?”
At this Matthew sprang so quickly from under the hood that he slammed his head against it.
“No,” he said, “Maisie stays here. You can move faster on your own.”
“I’m actually—”
“No.” It was the tone Peter used when he would not be persuaded, the vowel extended, punctuated with a strong purse of the lips. Matthew was not my father, had no legal power over me, but the similar force of his denial made me see myself a child. Tired and decidedly uninterested in the prospect of another long walk, I decided that I wouldn’t press the issue. I shrugged.
“I guess that’s settled, then.” Rafe met my eyes. “But I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry, Maisie, this will all be fine. Probably best not to mess with things until we get word from the experts.”
Matthew emerged once more to scowl. Rafe grinned, patted the pockets of his jacket, and set off down the road, walking quickly. When he was out of sight, Matthew returned to the engine.
“Rafe just said not to—” I started, but was silenced by the steely expression on Matthew’s face when he looked up at me.
So I sat on the side of the road and watched him fiddle about, unsure of how he could see clearly in the fast-dying twilight. What if another car needed to pass us, I wondered, with Matthew elbow-deep in gears and wires? What if Rafe did not return before true darkness? I chewed my fingernails as Matthew traveled from driver’s seat to hood, testing his handiwork, finding it lacking. Again and again, attempt and fail, another tweak, the pitiful sputter of whatever would not catch.
Eventually I curled into myself, hugging my knees, drowsy.
I WAS WRENCHED from my nap by the hack of Matthew’s cough, the crash of his body against metal, the slither of his jacket as he slid from the car’s hood to the road. I jumped up, hobbling toward him on stiff legs.
The night had settled into variegated darkness, a full moon and clear sky casting thin shafts of light. Matthew’s body was crumpled on the ground in front of the car. A steady hiss came from below the car’s hood, and as I rushed over I caught the whiff of a sour heady smell, burning and rotten. Had Matthew inhaled some sort of gas that made him dizzy? Instinctively, I grabbed Matthew by his uninjured arm, using my sleeve to shield him from my touch, and dragged him off the road. I knelt to examine him further and found a raw red burn at his elbow and a blossoming blister, the size and color of a plum, upon his palm. I pushed with knees and elbows, trying to turn his body over, and saw his eyes were open, pupils huge. He started convulsing, his head slapping irregularly, hard against the ground.
I took my jacket and rested it atop him to keep warm, but Matthew continued to toss about as if lost in some nightmare, his gray eyes open and glazed, their veins red and spindly. I tried to hold him still, but it was useless. His neck whipped one way, then the next, in rapid succession.