“See?” Calliope said. “I told you I could find my way back.”
Despite everything, Gemma could have kissed her. She laughed, and a group of birds startled, as if they, too, were shocked by the sound. “You’re brilliant,” she said, and couldn’t help it: she put her arms around Calliope, as she would have with April. Calliope tensed, and in her arms she felt so small, trembling slightly, a fine wire coiled and coiled almost to breaking, and Gemma felt terrible and guilty. Calliope just stood there, arms pinned to her sides, and Gemma realized she had likely never been hugged, not once in her life.
It wasn’t her fault she had been made this way, forced to observe and imitate, strange and kind and cruel by turns. Maybe she could be taught. She could learn.
Maybe Gemma could teach her.
As she pulled away, Calliope smiled—a real smile this time, that lit her face all the way to her eyes. And looking at her, Gemma’s vision doubled again, but this time she saw not herself but the face of that lost sister, the original daughter, Emma. An echo seemed to reach her from a lost world, and she knew then that Calliope was her chance to sew the past and the present together. She could love Calliope, and by loving Calliope she could make up for what her father had done, for the fact that she was alive in Emma’s place.
Calliope seemed to know exactly what she was thinking. She put her hand on Gemma’s heart. She pressed, and Gemma realized she was reading her pulse, trying to get the measure of her heartbeat: the only way she knew to care for someone else.
“You can be mine,” Calliope said. “You can be my replica.”
Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 18 of Lyra’s story.
NINETEEN
IT WAS LIKE WALKING INTO a portrait: the red barn, its weathered doors partially open; a tidy white house with faded curtains sitting in a dip of land, an old stone well and a bucket lying next to it on the grass, all bound together in the middle of so many rolling fields Gemma thought of a ship moored to an ocean of green.
Gemma couldn’t shake the idea that no one had been home in a hundred years. There were no cars in the driveway. She saw no wires, no satellite braced to the roof, nothing but old-fashioned rakes and shovels, neatly cleaned, as if polished by invisible hands after the original owners had departed. The cows in the pasture stared at them with deep and mournful eyes, and they, too, could have been ancient, could have been standing there for ten decades. Gemma’s relief gave way again to anxiety. It was wrong. It was like a photo with a too-obvious filter: somehow, beneath the brightness, you could see a truth that wasn’t nearly so pretty.
Pete veered toward the barn doors, maybe thinking he might find someone at work. But Calliope grabbed his wrist and shook her head.
“Don’t,” she whispered. For the first time, she looked really afraid. “The barn is where the animals go to die.” It was funny, what she knew and didn’t know.
“The barn is where the animals go to sleep,” Pete corrected her. But he let Calliope pull him toward the house.
Only when they came around the house and saw a buggy did Gemma understand.
“Amish,” Pete said.
“There won’t be a telephone,” Gemma said, fighting down a fear that she couldn’t exactly justify. Where was the family who lived here? They hadn’t driven off, obviously. They weren’t out catching a movie. The fields glimmered in the sun and yet there was no one turning them, raking, planting—Gemma didn’t know exactly what, but she knew on farms there was always work to be done.
Calliope was already at the front door. She turned back to gesture them inside. “Come, Gemma-Pete,” she said, as if their names were a single thing. “Come see.” In her dress, she looked as if she truly belonged. It was as if she learned by absorption, and had, like a chameleon, changed her skin to match her new surroundings.
“Well, whoever lives here will have to come back eventually,” Pete said. “We can rest. Have something to eat. Wait it out.” He managed a small smile. “At least we know they aren’t on a road trip.”
He was right. Besides, Gemma knew she couldn’t have gone much farther on foot anyway. Her ankle was so swollen it no longer even looked like an ankle. It wasn’t even a cankle—more like a purplish skin-bandage rolled and strapped around where her ankle should be.
The house was unlocked. Inside, it was very neat and full of sunlight. There was a gas stove and, Gemma saw, a small refrigerator cabled neatly to a battery. But no microwave, no digital clocks, no phones or iPads left casually on the counter, no mail, even. The lights were wall-mounted gas lanterns. Again she was struck by the weighty stillness, as if time had turned heavy and dropped like a hand over the whole place.
There was a plate on the table, toast half-eaten, along with a mug of unfinished coffee. This bothered her for some reason—why leave the house so neat but not clear your breakfast?
Calliope caught her staring. “There was a male,” she said. “He ran off when he saw me.”
“Why?” Gemma asked, and Calliope shrugged. It seemed weird to her that a boy in his own house would run at the sight of a girl on his land, but then again, she didn’t know much about Amish culture. Maybe he’d run for help, and even now there were people on the way who could take them to a town, or point them in the right direction, at least. “He didn’t say anything? He didn’t speak to you at all?”
“He just ran,” Calliope said.
They drank water from a sink that worked with a hand pump and came out cold and tasting deliciously of deep earth. Instantly, Gemma felt better. They ate bread and fried eggs with yolks the orange of a setting sun, and Gemma nearly cried: she’d never been hungry before, truly hungry, in a way that torqued your insides. She couldn’t even feel bad about the food they were stealing. They would pay it all back, anyway, she would make sure they did, once she got home.
In a cellar, Pete found an old-fashioned icebox, and in a closet, coarse linen hand towels that he used to make a pack for her ankle.
“We need to wrap your hand again,” he said, and Gemma didn’t want to but knew he was right.
He crouched in front of her and began to unwind the T-shirt they’d used to stop the bleeding. When it came away, Gemma was shocked by the sight of her missing finger: she couldn’t understand, for a moment, where it had gone, still felt it buzzing and tingling.
She bit her lip as tears broke up her vision. Pete said nothing. He didn’t look disgusted. He didn’t try and make her feel better. He just dampened a clean towel and slowly wiped the blood off the back of her hand, off her fingers. She bit the insides of her cheeks when he touched the wound itself, so hard her mouth flooded with a metal taste. Pain came down on her like a shutter, and then it passed.