Gallant(33)

Just to have something. At least I have Olivia. She is so quiet. She has your eyes, I think, but when I look at her I wonder if it’s you staring back at me, or him. I hope it is not him but those eyes are so steady, so old for a child’s face and I want to ask her if she knows if she sees if she belongs to that other place, but she is too young to speak.





I hear you in my dreams. Every night when I try to sleep I find myself back at the wall, and there you are, waiting on the other side. You bend your head to mine and whisper and that is how I know it is a lie. His voice in your mouth, telling me to come back, to come back, to come home.

There is no rest in sleep.

These dreams will be the death of me.





I feel like a pane of glass, shot through with cracks and every night the wind is buffeting. The splinters spread, the glass groans under the weight. It will break. I will break. It is only a matter of time and I am so so so tired it is hard to know sometimes I am sure I am awake, only to find myself waking and other times I am certain I’m asleep, only to drift off again. Time skips and my mind wanders and my feet carry me places when I am not looking I blink and I’ve moved the sun has moved the moon is up and Olivia sits there watching and I don’t know how long and I want to rest so I won’t be alone so I can see you I can see you and it makes me want to fall asleep but he always finds me there.





I don’t remember falling asleep but I woke up and I was standing over Olivia whispering her name and I am afraid it wasn’t my hand on her cheek wasn’t my voice in my mouth wasn’t my eyes watching her sleep and





I am so tired I don’t know what to do it isn’t safe but nowhere is safe now I am not here when I’m awake and I am somewhere else asleep I need to close my eyes but the shadows are moving I can see them when I am not looking and I am scared not of them but of me of the voice in the dark of the absence of you I am scared of what I’ll do if I don’t it doesn’t matter I know it can’t go on I can’t go on and I am sorry I wanted to be free sorry I opened the door sorry you’re not here and they are watching he is watching he wants you back but you are gone he wants me but I won’t go he wants her but she is all I have of you and me she is all she is all I want to go home.





Olivia Olivia Olivia

I have been whispering the name into your hair so you will remember will you remember?

I don’t know I can’t They say there is love in letting go but I feel only loss. My heart is ash and did you know ash holds its shape until you touch it I do not want to leave you but I no longer trust myself there is no time there is no time there is no time to I’m so sorry I don’t know what else to do

Olivia, Olivia, Olivia, Remember this—

the shadows cannot touch are not real the dreams are only dreams can never hurt you and you will be safe as long as you stay away from Gallant





The master of the house has not forgotten.

Every time his dry tongue slides over his polished teeth and dips into the groove, it is a spade driven into soil, the ground overturned, the memory made fresh.

A piece of him is missing. He cannot call it back.

Wrong, wrong. Things come together and fall apart, but he does not. He is the maker. He is the source. He lends, they borrow, but everything comes back.

He counts every sliver and every bone, he knows where they are when they are with him and when they are not, and he can call them home.

He snaps his fingers, and they skitter across the floor, fit themselves into the gaps, skin closing over every wound until only four remain.

Here is the place where the rib will go.

Here, the collar, here the wrist.

And here, the molar. The only wound that will not close. The master grinds his teeth.

A piece of him was stolen.

And soon he will have it back.





Part Four


Beyond the Wall





Chapter Sixteen




The longer she studies the journal, the more obvious it is.

The placement of the drawings. The way they disappear when he does.

Her mother’s ghoul wavers at the edge of her sight, watching, wordless, as she turns through the green journal again, this time studying the inks as if they were letters, a correspondence played out in two forms, one line, the other shape. She tries to read them both, as if both are words, but the images are too abstract.

Why didn’t he just write? she thinks, digging her thumbs into the soft space above her eyes. Perhaps he was like Matthew. And yet, he could discern her mother’s hand well enough to answer. She imagines Grace Prior poring over the illustrations. She was clearly able to decipher them.

Olivia will, too.

She brushes her hand over her father’s work, the ink as thin and wild as watercolor.

It is like watching clouds, trying to spot the shapes as they drift past, each one something and nothing at the same time, a promise of a picture more than the picture itself, but the longer she looks, the more her vision blurs, and the more her vision blurs, the more she seems to notice. Soon she stops trying to read the lines as shapes, and they become gestures. The images unfurl into sentiments. It is the difference between a language spoken and one signed, the mouth shaping words while the hands shape more, words and thoughts and feelings.