The thought doesn’t comfort me.
I pull myself, fighting against the mud, which tugs like something trying to keep me. I fall forward, reaching for the grass beyond the tree line, and I heave myself, gasping and grunting out of the mud, which still tries to drag me back like hands tugging on my jeans.
I claw my way out, collapsing on the grass, and crawling on my exhausted legs, panting and sweating, yearning to run back to La Baume, but unable to get to my feet.
The woods seem taller, looming above like they are getting ready to chase me, and I dig my nails into the earth and haul myself farther away. Eventually, I manage to get to my knees, crawling, then half standing—stumbling, and falling all the way back, shedding Python mud in my wake, leaving behind dozens of animal corpses with their pleading eyes, and the tall, thin shadow of something I will ignore until I have no choice.
I push the memory of that night away. Later, when I’m sure Gowan is with Nori and not spying on me, I put the old root I found in the garden into the grass no more than ten paces from the boundary to Python. I tie a length of Cath’s red ribbon to it.
Then I walk back inside, convincing myself that the trees are not laughing at me.
Creeeeeeeeaaaaak.
Aunt Cath’s pacing is endless. I miss her. I miss the way she used to be. It hurts to remember.…
Can I have some cream? Nori had signed.
Cath, who had been sitting with Nori and me every day to learn the signs herself, had smiled.
“You like cream, little slug. But too much will make you a maggot! How about some big, juicy raspberries from the garden instead and maybe you’ll be a butterfly?”
Nori had squealed silently, clapping her hands.
Cath had winked at me over the top of Nori’s bobbing head, and I had smiled.
And I had loved her.
October 17, 1980: Three little girls played by the lake. It had been drying up for years, and Papa said that within their lifetimes it would be nothing but a muddy patch no one would look twice at. The water, he said, was going, dying, vanishing. It was being reclaimed by the sky.
The girls believed there were still fish in the lake, small and putrescent as it was, and they ran the circumference with their nets, trying to catch one for supper. Only one of the three persisted for long.
One sister, the eldest, sat neatly on the grass, watching while she sewed a new skirt for her doll, Nancy.
Another sister, the middle one, stood in the mud, letting it squelch between her toes. She was watching the last sister, the littlest of all, run round and round, dipping her net into the water and squealing. But there were never any fish, only tadpoles.
They had tried to keep one last summer, thoughts of a pet frog to play with tumbling around their young minds. It had died in its bucket. Anne, the littlest, had sobbed for days and carried out a funeral, which even Papa was forced to attend.
They were sisters three in a house the color of the sky.
Anne. Youngest. Most precious.
Pamela. The middle sister. Wildest.
Catherine. Eldest. Most sensible.
The Jewel.
The Adventurer.
The Protector.
Three little girls did a very bad thing.
7
chew chew chew
Choo, choo, train!
chew, chew, brain.
bite, bite, swallow,
I am hollow!
night, night, man,
dream, I can
cry, cry, cry!
bye, bye! Die.
La Baume is a mammoth. Three stories, not including the attic. The third floor is derelict—everything from the wallpaper to some of the floorboards stripped away by the soldiers or refugees or something during World War II. I’m hazy on the details.
I have a habit of wandering the third floor by myself. It always feels eerily cold, empty enough to feel slightly sentient. It’s a barrier between Cath and the rest of us, though it doesn’t do much to filter out the creaking of her pacing. It has textured wallpaper. Mostly it’s peeling away, or gone entirely in patches, and it smells like abandoned bees’ nests, the floors of the rooms at the far end littered with the shells of wasps and hornets. A carpet of decay. I closed those doors a long time ago, but every now and then I poke my head inside. Those floors are what my insides look like. Hundreds—thousands—of dead husks of what used to be wasps. These walks are an indulgence.
Pull yourself together, I tell myself.
When I go to check on Nori, she is sitting in her room, staring at the corner again and grinning like an idiot. I might be bold and take one of Cath’s old dolls. It’s not healthy for a seven-year-old to be alone so much. The fact that she finds walls so interesting is proof enough.