In the Shadow of Blackbirds(24)

She nodded as if she wanted me to continue. “Go on.”

“Do you swear you won’t mention his name?”

“I swear.”

I swallowed, which made my parched throat ache. “I left my body and sat on the branch of your eucalyptus tree for a bit. I saw myself down there, with my clothes smoking and the neighbors gathering around me. It didn’t feel right, like I was stuck between life and death, and I wasn’t sure where to go.”

“You mean … you were a spirit?”

“I’m still not saying I believe in all that.”

“Was Wilfred there? Or your mother?”

“I didn’t see anyone. An ambulance showed up, and I decided to push myself back into my flesh, which hurt like mad.”

She squirmed with excitement. “We should tell him.”

“Don’t say his name. Don’t you dare compare what happened to me to those photographs.”

“He should know you’ve been to the other side. Oh, Mary Shelley, can you imagine what he’d photograph now if you posed for him? Do you realize how much serenity your body is emanating? I can feel it in your touch. It’s like you’re partially still in the spirit realm.”

“Don’t say that.” I snatched my hand away from hers. “I’ve had a hard enough time fitting into this world without thinking I’m only halfway here.”

“That’s what it feels like.”

“Stop.”

“Oh, Mary Shelley.” She clutched my arm. “What an opportunity you’ve been given. You’ve gone somewhere the rest of us have only dared to imagine, and you’ve brought a portion of its wonders back with you.” She removed her glasses and wiped her watery eyes with the back of her wrist. “This is going to change everything. I just know it.”

I studied the hand that had soothed her and tried to figure out if I looked or felt any different than before. My trembling fingers still seemed to be made of flesh and bone. No heavenly glow surrounded my body. Spirits didn’t huddle around my bed and try to make their presence known.

But she was right. Something had changed.





THE HOSPITAL RELEASED ME AS SOON AS I COULD STAND up on my own. I wasn’t gasping for my last breath; therefore, they didn’t have any spare time for me. Nurses were tying toe tags around flu patients who hadn’t died yet, so I made no complaint about vacating my dark corner.

My head still throbbed, as did my fingers wrapped in bandages, and my back was sore from being thrown to the ground by the force of the shock—not to mention the bruises sustained during that ambulance ride. Aunt Eva hired a taxi to take us home so I wouldn’t have to walk.

I stared at the back of the driver’s black cap and balding head through the window of the enclosed passenger area. “My father goes on trial in December,” I told my aunt. “Uncle Lars sent a telegram.”

“He did?”

“I dropped it on your front lawn. I don’t know if it’s still there.”

“It’s on my front lawn?” Aunt Eva clutched her handbag to her stomach. “It doesn’t mention the word treason, does it?”

“No. But Uncle Lars said Dad could be sentenced to twenty years.”

“Twenty years?”

I tried to nod, but the movement hurt my head. “He shouldn’t even be in jail.”

“Do you know what he did up there, Mary Shelley? Do you know his crimes?”

I wrapped my arms around my middle. “I believe he helped men avoid the draft.”

“That’s right. Uncle Lars said your father was running some sort of group out of the back of his grocery store. Do you know how much trouble the rest of us could be in if anyone learns we’re related to a traitor?”

“Don’t call him a traitor. He’s a good man.”

“Then why are you a thousand miles from home, sticking yourself in lightning storms, winding up half-dead in a hospital? If he was so good, why didn’t he worry more about keeping his own daughter safe?”

I leaned back against the padded taxi seat and clenched my jaw, unable to come up with an answer.


BACK AT HER HOUSE, AUNT EVA TUCKED ME INTO BED and told me to push aside all the unpleasantness that had coaxed me out into that lightning storm.

“Your job right now is to heal,” she said as she pulled the warm sheet up to my chin. “Don’t use your brain to do anything else.”

So heal I did.

I lay there in bed with my skull splitting in two and my fingers burning and itching inside my bandages, but I refused to take any medicine to kill the pain. I wanted to be able to think without any substances blurring my mind. While Oberon chattered downstairs and Aunt Eva divided her time between the shipyard and me, my body repaired itself. All the tiny cells, nerves, and tissues worked like an efficient machine below the surface of my skin, and I longed to learn more about anatomy and physics and lightning and to listen to music that would challenge the recovering synapses of my brain. But the schools remained closed, and my body continued to stay stuck in a bed with springs that sounded like an accordion, my head and arms surrounded by bags of garlic-scented gum. Aunt Eva insisted the bags would chase away the hospital’s flu germs. She also made me wear a goose-grease poultice on my neck and stuffed salt up my nose. I felt like she was preparing me as the main course for a dinner party instead of protecting me from an illness.