Where Bluebirds Fly

Chapter 14



My eyes refuse to open. My fingertips find the pulsing spot they used to inhabit, and rub furiously. I open the lids a slit, and immediately wish I hadn’t. The light is pure pain—a needle spearing my eyeball, trying to pop it from its socket. This pain is familiar.

I don’t welcome it like an old friend; I wrinkle my nose and know I must ride out this unwanted visitor inside my skull. The pain has one good trait. It vanquishes the hornets. The cowards vacate at the first sign of it.

I hear the bed creak, and it depresses beside me as someone sits down. The throb in my head is muted because of this bed. I’ve never felt a place so comforting. I picture myself lying amid wispy clouds as I roll toward the unseen form.

They must be very wealthy. Perhaps I could be their servant.

My mind searches. My thoughts befuddled—trying to recall my most recent memory. Then it rushes back, vomiting up images.

The men. John. The bridge. I whimper.

“Are you all right?” a low voice whispers. I’d recognize it anywhere now. My heart immediately hammers in my chest.

Pain like a hatchet if I open my eyes…

I decide a glimpse be worth it. Familiar, almond-shaped, bright-blue eyes consider me. Kind eyes. He has a calming presence, as I haven’t felt in many years. His hands are anxious, folded in front of his face as he stares overtop them.

No man has ever regarded me such. It seems he cannot look away. His expression reminds me of men gazing at a master’s paintings; awe and desire and longing. For me?

“My head—it pains me beyond speech.”

“What does it feel like? Can you describe it?”

“A pain behind my eye and the light-how is there so much light?” I sit up quickly, glancing outside at the black night. I am surrounded by strange machines which drive back the darkness. “Where be the candles? What devilry be this?”

My head screams in protest from the quick move to sitting. I cry out, and silence it by sinking my teeth into my bottom lip.

“It sounds like a migraine. Please, Verity, lay down.”

My mind flashes a picture of my brother. The panic resumes as the familiar tingling fingers of fear desert my face and wrap around my neck. I gasp with the feeling.

“John, oh my John. I must return to him.”

I slide my feet off the bed, trying to stand. I feel my knee hit the floor before I realize I am falling. My hands slap against the floor, narrowly rescuing my head. The pain behind my eyes behind my eyes roars to an exquisite, pulsing intensity.

It culminates behind my eye. My stomach seizes, my head imploding. “Oh, no.” Vomit erupts from my mouth, surrounding me.

“Oh, Truman, I am so terribly sorry.” I freeze, irrationally awaiting the whip’s sting across my back. My mind spews out memories of public floggings.

I keep my eyes shut, coward that I am—but the silence is so loud…I open them.

I am alone.

I shake myself. He wouldn’t hurt me. He isn’t like the others. My mind trips on the words. From my time.

In a moment, he returns. To my utter disbelief, he drops beside me, a rag in his hand. I shake my head, my lips working through silent, amazed words as he sops up the horrid mess I’ve made.

His eyes are anxious as they flick up. “You must lie down. I understand about your brother. I know you’re frantic, but you’re not fit to walk…let alone walk through time.” The last words are strained, his face disbelieving.

“Oh John, John.” My lips tremble. Panic squeezes my brain, arriving in the center of a dense, mental fog. I picture a long hallway. I feel, and know, behind each door be the gaping maw of death.

I have only to choose which way to die. John, as a wee boy, walks down the hall. My mind flashes again.

John’s tiny two-year-old hands, reaching up to me, to lift him off a dirt floor.

His gapped-tooth-smile as he presents his first precocious drawing.

“Verity? Verity?” I hear his voice. It sounds far away.

He snaps his fingers in front of my eyes.

Suddenly, I am rising off the floor and I feel my head against his chest. He places me on the bed with such care it fractures my heart. Surely I do not deserve such treatment.

I grasp his hand and squeeze. “Please, I must return. They will kill him-he will hang. I told you, everyone in Salem is either afflicted or accused.”

The drive to move, to act, to leave this infernal, comfortable bed shakes my insides.

His hands stroke his concerned face, and he stands, pacing beside the bed. “I will go down to the corn and see if the door is open.”

“You would?”

“Of course, as soon as I’m sure you’re well.”

“What time be this?”

“The twenty-first century.”

I nod but it still feels too big an idea to fit inside my head.

I open my eyes and stare at my surroundings in a whole new way. Contraptions abound, the likes of which I’ve never imagined, let alone seen. How odd, to see creations for which I have no name. I feel like Adam.

“This year is black.”

“Excuse me?” He stops pacing and his blue eyes instantly flick to my face, intense.

“Nothing.”

He quickly drops beside me on the bed. His hand cradles mine, and the warmth of it cuts through the panic, quieting the antics of my heart. My headache is easing.

The hornets howl; they do not like him. His mere presence dulls them to a low hum.

“No, it’s all right. You don’t have to be afraid with me. I won’t let anyone or anything harm you.”

His sincere eyes make me want to blurt out every secret I’ve ever kept. My traitorous breath hitches again. I close my eyes, too cowardly to watch his judgment.

“I am…different.” I peek up to evaluate his expression.

“You’ve come to the right place, then.”

My eyebrow rises with the question forming on my lips. “T-Truman?”

“Please, don’t act so hesitant. I’ve already admitted I can’t keep my mind off you. Pathetically so. I’m different, too.”

His face turns rapturous—like I’ve given him with the most perfect gift he’s ever seen.

“I, I—” he stutters. His eyes cloud with his own protective sheen. He winces. “People emit colors for me, and their names have tastes, for that matter. You, for instance...are now the most beautiful shade of purple.”

I lean over, looking past him to a looking glass. My own quizzical expression stares back. His gaze follows mine, and his face flushes.

“No, only I can see it. It seems to be tied to people’s personalities. Almost like…an anchor to their souls? Who they really are?”

“Oh,” I breathe. “Really?” How could he know these things? My mind asks a question, I don’t want answered. Could he be in league with the dark one?

His expression shifts back to concern. “I can feel your fear, right now. I swear, it’s scientific, nothing supernatural. You’re outlined in red, around the purple now. And the squint of your eyes, the doubtful slant of your mouth…well they scream fear. I am positive.”

“Supernatural?”

“I’m not a witch or anything. Also, I can just look at people’s expressions, and decipher them—tell when they’re lying. It’s automatic.”

“Oh, all right. I…” I hesitate. I have never admitted my abnormality to another, save my family. “See days, months, letters—in color.”

“Yes! I’ve studied it! Color-grapheme synesthesia. Why that’s the most common kind. The statistics say one in every two-hundred people have a form of it.”

“What? It has a name? Other people have it too?”

“Most definitely. I find it fascinating.”

Tears of relief spring up and trail down my cheeks. A reluctant hope clogs my heart, making it skip a beat.

“They all proclaimed me a witch. They would’ve killed me. And you say it be…normal?”

“For you, yes.”

Anger consumes hope. I grasp a handful of my hair and shake it at him. “And the way I look? My eyes, do you have the answer for them, as well?”

“It has a big name, too. Heterochromia. But also normal—for you. I can show pictures of others on the internet.”

“The w-what?”

Sobs break the encrusted façade around my heart. Years of silence, of suppressing every fear, every thought—relief busts it open, shattering in my chest.

His warm, muscled arms pull me into his embrace. I try to lose myself in his scent. Try not to think. He smells so clean, compared to other men.

But I’ve never been this close before, to anyone.

My voice is muffled into his shirt. “You said people’s names have tastes. What do I taste like?” I lift my eyes to take in his face, embarrassment heating my cheeks.

His cheeks redden in return. I almost laugh.

Dueling embarrassments.

“Like the snow. Pure and precise and…invigorating.” A smile parts his lips. I feel the unfamiliar longing inside me. His eyes widen slightly as if he senses it, and he pulls me tighter in his arms.

He slowly bends his head toward me and his lips graze mine-softly at first, then they move furiously, with crushing swipes.

I open my mouth and close my eyes, savoring the feeling. A hot flush rushes up my neck and I grasp the back of his hair in both my hands.

I must not. I must not.

But I cannot stop. I’ve waited so long...to have something to love.

He pulls back abruptly, his face suddenly serious with some unspoken realization.

“I will help you get back to Salem. To find your brother, but only if I can come with you.”

* * *

John jerked awake. Something had passed over his leg. He shivered.

I shall not look.

His mind paraded an endless stream of pictures. Pictures of comfort—his talisman against the continuous, almost inhuman, moans of the accused.

He’d found a piece of shale within reach of his bars. So far, one half of his coffin cell was scrawled in memories.

One wall housed his boyhood home, the sprawling countryside in Maine, where life was happy, before his parents’ death. He barely remembered it now; just random images, conjured from the back of his mind.

On the other side, he sketched a quiet pond near the Parris household. He and Verity’s secret meeting place.

“John, son. It’s time to go. Your trial be today.”

Constable Corwin opened the cell. John’s legs quivered as he tried to stand. He clutched uselessly at the bars as they buckled. Corwin and the boy caught him beneath his arms, dragging him toward the light.

Pangs of searing pain shot through his thighs with each step.

“Open the door!” Corwin called into the other room.

As they entered the Ordinary, and the makeshift courtroom, he felt the heat of a hundred eyes judging him. A shudder, borne of their scorn, slid down his spine.

His eyes slid across their faces and he sucked in the musty air, trying to fill his lungs.

His mind screamed retreat, to pull inside, like a turtle to its shell.

But inside, Verity’s voice warned, “You must defend yourself John. Show no fear.”

A choked sob escaped, nonetheless.

Hands seated him roughly on a bench, where the accused were queued in the order of their hearings. Judge Hathorne pounded his gavel for attention.

“Candy, slave of Mrs. Hawkes. You are hereby accused of witchcraft. How do you plead?”

“Candy no witch in her country. Candy’s mother no witch. Candy no witch Barbados. This country, mistress, give Candy witch.”**

“So your mistress made you a witch in this country?”

“Yes, Mistress bring Candy ink, book and make Candy sign.” The woman pretended to scribble an imaginary pen.

“Your spectral self is accused of attacking Mary Walcott and Anne Putnam, Jr.”

John scoffed to the woman beside him, “Is there any afflicted who has not attacked Anne?”

Constable Corwin shot him a glare, and he pressed his lips together.

“How did you afflict these women?” Hathorne prompted.

“If Candy allowed, she will fetch the items.”

Candy left the courtroom, flanked on either side by two men. Within minutes, she returned with an armful of belongings. In one hand was a handkerchief, which circled a piece of cheese and a piece of grass and was knotted in the middle. And in the other, she grasped two knotted rags.

Her feet no more than crossed the threshold when Mary Warren and Abigail and Deliverance Hobbs dropped to the ground, their bodies convulsing. The sound of Deliverance’s head bouncing up and down off the floor reminded John of smashing pumpkins.

Mary’s eyes filled with terror as they locked with Candy’s. “She and her mistress and the man in black, they pinch us with the rags!”

Judge Hathorne screamed, “Remove those from her immediately.” His gaze never left the spectacle of the women, who now shuddered and flipped like suffocating fishes.

Removing the items from Candy produced no relief. Abigail Hobbs screamed in pain and grasped her leg as if bitten.

Hawthorne intervened once again. “Untie the knots; they must be the voodoo items. A knot for each of their souls.”

Corwin hurried over and untied the knots, looking expectantly at the writhing trio.

“No good, sir,” Corwin said.

Deliverance screamed, “Mercy, please sir!” Her head twisted and angled to the right as if slapped.

“Candy, eat the grass!” he commanded.

Candy looked as mortified as the witnesses. She shuffled over and stuffed the piece of grass into her mouth. She chewed it quickly and opened her mouth, like a child, to show she had swallowed it.

Mary’s fit reached apoplectic proportions. Her form went tombstone-rigid, and her eyes rolling back to show the whites.

John could scarcely breathe. The only time he’d seen such violent fits was when his father had shot a dog infected with the distemper.

His desperate mind yearned for Verity, and he imagined her steadying hand on his shoulder. He felt vibration in his throat and realized he was moaning.

Hathorne screamed, “Burn the rags, Corwin!”

Constable Corwin hurried outside and returned, brandishing a foot warmer. He shoved one of the rags inside and quickly lit it. The dry piece of fabric blazed orange in the center of the dusky room.

Every soul held its breath. Would the rag’s destruction halt the chaos?

Deliverance’s wail fractured the silence. Her hands patted all over her chest, as if extinguishing flames. “It burns us! AHHHHH!”

Hathorne’s face was now visibly flushed despite the dim light. “Douse it man!”

Corwin bolted outside, returning with a bucketful of water. Half of it sloshed on the floor as he skidded to a stop in front of the burning heap.

As the arc of water poured onto the flame, strangled choking sounds emitted from all three women.

Abigail managed a whisper. “You be drowning us!”

John’s hands flew to his eyes. He slipped into his head, reveling in the pictures there, willing his soul to be there.

The room faded to a distorted reality, as if underwater. He knew his eyes were unfocused and far away. Verity had begged him to never escape, described how his face frightened her when he escaped. “Like a house abandoned,” she’d whispered.

He cared not.

Finally, a woman stood across the room, her hand clutching at her heart. Mrs. Hawkes was barely heard over the din of the hapless trio on the floor. “I confess, Candy and I are guilty.”

The women’s writhing halted immediately and they lay still as the stones on the floor.

In a far off voice, he heard Hathorne say, “Return the other prisoners. This is enough devilry for one day.”

John felt hands grasp both his arms.

He did not struggle as they hauled him back toward the witch-dungeon.



**Author’s Note: part of dialogue was from actual Salem transcripts.

* * *