“We’ve told him to stay away from the border so many times.” She shakes her head and I worry tears might be about to break over her eyelids. “At night, we even tell him the story of the wheat farmer’s daughter.”
I smile at her, knowing she is a good mother, she does everything she can. “The yarrow won’t cure him of the illness if he already has it,” I explain, still holding Birdie’s hand. Yarrow is only used for mild sickness, an upset stomach, a lingering fever. But I can see that she’s desperate, willing to reveal what’s happened to Arwen in hopes I might be able to help. But there is only one possible remedy for elm pox, and I know she won’t want to do it. So instead, I offer her something benign, something to ease her mind, but in truth, won’t save her son if he’s infected with the rot. “Come to my house tomorrow and I’ll give you a bit of fresh ginger root. You can give Arwen a warm bath steeped with the ginger, and it might leech any remnants of the illness from his skin.”
This is a lie, and maybe she knows it, but she manages a tiny smile. “Thank you,” she gulps out, her gaze skipping over the gathering circle, where almost everyone has found a seat, then she adds, “Please don’t say anything.”
I nod at her. “I won’t.”
She releases my hand and steps out from the shadowed trees, working her way through the group to find her husband and son.
My own husband is silent as we find a seat at the very back of the circle on one of the last open benches. I know he heard our conversation—at least some of it—but he won’t look at me. Maybe he can see the tension tugging at my temples, the emotion I’m trying to hide. Birdie’s son made a foolish mistake, he reached an arm through the line of border trees. While my husband willingly crossed the boundary night after night, as I slept in our bed, thinking he was safe.
But this isn’t only what bothers me. It’s the other thing Birdie said.
The trees have been splitting open.
The elm pox is close. Right at our borders, inching along our valley.
I swivel around, scanning the crowd for my sister, but she’s not in the group.
She’s still with Levi, in his house at the far end of the compound. They often meet before gatherings—she offers him guidance and direction. But only I know she gives him more than just acuity.
She gives herself.
BEE
Levi’s house at the eastern edge of the compound smells of damp pine, moss embedded in the roof, and linens freshly washed by one of the women who regularly cleans and cares for his home—a task he is not burdened with as the leader of our community.
He lives in one of the larger homes in Pastoral: an original homestead built when settlers first arrived in these woods, before they fled and never came back.
I sit on the couch, running my palms across the woven fabric, a square pattern repeated over and over. I’ve felt this fabric against my bare skin many times before—my shoulder blades, my hipbones, making raw marks across my flesh. My own kind of pattern. Levi has peeled away my clothes and kissed me on this couch. He’s whispered things no one else would believe.
My love for him is almost painful: desperate, needy. Tears on the floor, deep, heartsick kind of love.
He was with me the day my sight left me: lying on our backs in the meadow, toes just barely touching the edge of the pond, while Levi ran his thumb across my palm, whispering a story I can’t recall now. The trees above us began to quiver and I remember laughing, thinking the shimmery prisms of light were some trick of the summer sun. That the sky had gone a little mad. But then I blinked and a deep wave of panic shook through me, like the ground was heaving, and I was drifting away on a great wide river where I couldn’t reach the shore. It was all being ripped away—so quickly I didn’t even have time to take one last look. “I can’t see,” I said aloud, the terror rattling my voice.
But I felt Levi’s hand tighten around mine, squeezing. “I’m right here,” he said, and my heartbeat calmed, my breathing slowed. “I’ve got you.”
I knew my vision wouldn’t return after that day. I felt the absoluteness of it.
I was nineteen, and I was blind.
But Levi was always there, never allowing me to feel alone in that immeasurable darkness. I loved him for it, for not letting go of my hand that day, for promising to stay with me—no matter what.
The following year, Cooper—our founder—died, and Levi became the leader of Pastoral.
He had been raised by Cooper after Levi’s mother—one of the originals to arrive in Pastoral—died in childbirth. He was brought up as if he were Cooper’s own son, groomed to lead, to take over once Cooper had passed away. And I knew he would embrace his role as if he were meant for it. Because he was.
I hear footsteps on the stairs, a hand against the railing, and then his voice. “Bee,” he says. “You came early.” There is a gentle smile between each word, his heartbeat growing louder as he crosses the living room to sit beside me. He is warmth and the familiar weight of his eyes on me, needing, seeing me in a way no one else ever could, and I know there are things I should say to him—about Theo and the truck, and other secrets I’ve kept—but I keep my mouth shut. For now.
Instead, I think of nights when his hands razed my flesh, pulling me to him like he would die if I didn’t promise to stay his forever. “I’ve missed you,” he says now, sliding his hand over mine, his voice like wax dripping from a candle.
“It’s only been a couple days,” I answer, barely able to speak past the lies lodged inside me.
Sometimes I try to picture Levi when we were younger, the curve of his river-green eyes, the half-grin he sometimes offered up, only one side of his mouth rising as he held back a laugh. He was handsome. Bold in a way that was sometimes unsettling, as if he could do no wrong. A man who hid his flaws well, who seemed beyond fault or measure. But I know his weakness: me.