A History of Wild Places(63)

“Ginger water. It’ll warm you.” I inch closer to Ash and help him to drink. He finishes the rest of the jar, gulping deeply—his eyes are clearer than Turk’s, more lucid, but he still looks like he’s in pain.

“Can you feel your arms?” I ask, eyes flicking up to where they are tied above his head.

“Not since last night. They hurt for a while, but not anymore.”

I fight the urge to wince, to show him the pity I feel. Even if they survive, if the ground really does leech away the pox, they might lose their hands, their arms. They might be worthless after this. Without circulation, I’m not sure a limb can still work, can survive after this long.

“I wish there was something else I could do,” I whisper.

“My child will die without a doctor,” he says, swallowing hard. “You could help her.”

I shake my head at him. “I can’t.”

“Please.” He coughs and the motion seems to cause him pain, the weight of too much soil bearing down on his chest.

Henry moves closer. “That’s enough,” he says down to me. “You should go before someone sees you.”

“Just a minute, Henry,” I answer. I look back at Ash but his gaze has wavered, he’s looking at nothing, at a spot on the ground.

“Calla, please. I’m not supposed to let anyone get this close. You’re putting yourself at risk.”

I shake my head but Henry touches my shoulder, and there is fear in his eyes—fear for me. But he doesn’t know I’ve already been exposed in more ways than I care to think about.

Still, I nod and push myself up.

“Let’s just hope it works,” Henry says, glancing quickly at the two men.

“Yes,” I answer, breathless.

I can’t leave the gathering circle fast enough, or Pastoral. I can’t look at the strain on everyone’s faces, the regret writhing beneath their pinched mouths. We have done this to them—to Ash and Turk.

We are all to blame.





BEE


I am quarantined, caged within the box of my bedroom. Three days pass, and now Calla is standing in the open doorway, arms crossed.

“You need to stay here,” she says.

I sit at the edge of my bed, feeling the flutter of my heart in my chest, but also listening for the other small heartbeat tapping like rain from the inside out. “I want to go to the ritual,” I tell her.

“No.”

“I’m not sick, Calla.” I stand up and touch the metal bed frame, my ankle throbbing only a little, the cut mostly healed. “It’s been several days. I feel fine.”

Calla unfolds her arms, her body weight shifting in the doorway, making the floorboards creak and settle. “We need to wait another day or two, make sure you don’t show any symptoms.”

I’m already certain I don’t have the pox—I can hear the clear, steady rhythm of my lungs, air spilling in and out without a rasp. But my sister crosses the room and takes my chin in her hand, directing my face upward so she can inspect my eyes for drops of blood spreading along the white edges. She then lifts each of my forearms to check the veins, for the blue to turn an inky black. Satisfied, she drops my arms back to my sides.

If I have the rot, then so does she. She’s touched my skin and slept in my bed and done nothing to protect herself.

“We’ll be back right after,” she says, and I can hear her straightening up, the bending of joints, her gaze shifting so that she’s looking to the window.

Air escapes my throat. “Fine.”

I hear Calla and Theo leave the house through the back door.

But I don’t sit and wait for them to return, I slink down the hall, the wound on my ankle where I tore it open against a rock still stings when I move, but not enough to stop me from venturing outside and up the path to Pastoral.

Tonight is the end of the ritual.

Tonight, Ash and Turk will be pulled from the ground and we will know if they have the pox inside them. If they’ve been cured or not. If they will be allowed to live… or not.

When I reach the gathering circle, I stay back in the trees, out of sight. The sun is nearly set and I can feel its serrated edges of light breaking across my skin, warming the parts of me that Levi will never touch again.

Levi.

I haven’t seen him since I told him about the baby, since he said that he doesn’t love me enough to stay with me and raise our child. Since he broke me open. And still, he is a dichotomy of pain and devotion inside my ribs, my heart beating against these two emotions: the weak-kneed desire he stirs loose inside me and the grating anger at the back of my teeth.

I want to hurt him, and I want to sneak up to his front porch and beg him to love me still.

I hate it. I hate the way he makes me feel.

A hush sinks over the group gathered at the circle around the Mabon tree. I can’t see the two men buried in the earth, but I can hear their low, labored breaths, their struggle to draw in air. Their heartbeats have slowed, the cold of the earth pulling the life out of them.

I strain, trying to hear any hint of the illness, to know if it’s truly inside them, but every breath sounds raw and serrated, and I can’t be sure. Infected or not, they sound like they’re dying.

Levi emerges, walking to the Mabon tree.

The others shift on their wooden seats: bare feet against the dirt, toes wriggling; fabric scraping together as arms are crossed; throats cleared. While my own body fidgets, my mind bulges with a thousand things I want to scream through the trees at Levi. But I stay quiet.