Near the Bone(15)

William grabbed the front of her coat and pulled her up so that her feet dangled somewhere near his knees. His face pressed very close to hers, all his bright burning anger gone now, replaced with ice.

Mattie would rather have had the burn. The ice always hurt more.

“You listen to me now, Martha. You only got what you deserved, and since you deserved it, you will walk home on your own two feet. If you don’t keep up with me I will not return for you. If you are not home by bedtime it will go worse for you when you do arrive. You are my vessel to do with as I please. Do you understand? Now walk.”

He dropped her and there wasn’t a chance in the world she’d catch herself, as broken and disoriented as she was. Mattie crumpled to the ground.

She felt like she had no bones anymore, and everything around her spun in all directions at once. That’s when she noticed she could only see out of one eye.

Mattie carefully probed the area with her fingers. Her left eye was a swollen mass, so tender to the touch that she cried out.

“I said walk,” William said.

Mattie looked up at him, pushed vaguely into the snow to help herself stand, but only managed to make little snow piles on either side of her body. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. They made her swollen eye sting.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t stand up. Please help me. Please.”

She reached for him, her hand trembling.

He glared down at her for so long that she thought he might relent. Then he spun on his heel and strode away.

“Wait,” Mattie said, but her voice wouldn’t get loud enough for him to hear. It was only a tiny thing that whispered.

She touched her neck, whimpered at the slight pressure. He must have choked me, she thought. I don’t remember.

William was disappearing quickly. He seemed very distant to her already, his brown coat and trousers blending in with the trees.

Mattie felt the first stirrings of panic.

Don’t leave me, don’t leave me, I don’t know the way home.

She’d never come this far before, never been allowed to. The cabin was down the mountain from where she was, that was all she knew. William had set the pace and the path.

Why, oh why hadn’t she paid more attention? Why had she let her mind wander? She’d never been like that when she was young. When she was young she’d drink in everything around her greedily, tucking every sight away in her mind so she could remember it later.

(They were moving through the dark woods fast, so fast, but what she could see she promised herself to remember. She’d remember so that she could find her way home.)

But where was home? That she couldn’t remember.

Home is the place where they called you Samantha.

Samantha, Mattie remembered. Samantha.

Samantha struggled. Samantha fought back. Samantha ran away.

Yes, she ran away from William but he caught her and put her in the Box. The Box was where bad girls went.

“If I don’t get home soon he’ll put me in the Box,” Mattie said to herself.

She had to stand up. She had to. But how will you find your way home?

Stand up first. Just stand. Then walk. Then worry about how to get where she needed to go.

But it was no good. No matter how she rolled and pushed and struggled, she couldn’t get on her feet. After several minutes she lay in the snow, panting, unable to do anything except gaze up at the too-bright sky and the dark silhouettes of the branches against it.

Trees, she thought. The animals in the trees. William doesn’t know.

(It doesn’t matter because William is going to be safe in the cabin with the warm fire and you’re going to be out with the night and the cold and the creature that strings animals up like decorations)

The creature. She needed to get away, get inside before it found her. It wouldn’t even need to hunt her in the state she was in. It would just scoop her up and take her back to the cave and rip her to pieces and sort all those pieces like a child organizing its building blocks by shape.

Get up, Mattie. Get up before it finds you.

She rolled to her stomach, propped herself up on her elbows, then used her elbows to dig into the snow and pull herself forward, dragging her legs behind.

It was painfully slow going. Her body felt like it wasn’t attached to her brain, like it wouldn’t respond to the orders she gave it. Every few inches she stopped, her breath hard and fast. She felt the throb of her heart against the snow, thought sometimes it might beat right through her ribs and stay there, an offering for the thing in the woods.

After a long while she was close enough to a tree trunk to grab it. She threw both arms around the tree, pushed up with her knees, and by very slow degrees managed to kneel. Her face rested against the tree bark, her arms trembling.

“Keep going, Mattie. Keep going.”

Somehow she got one foot on the ground, and then the other, and then—hugging the tree for dear life—she rose up until finally, finally she was standing.

The next tree wasn’t too far away. Mattie unwrapped her arms, used both hands to brace against the trunk. Then she pushed off, using the momentum to stumble into the next tree.

She was up. She could walk—if you could call it walking. She just needed to find her path home now.

A second later she laughed, though she stopped quickly because laughing made her throat hurt and because it was a horrible barky sound that echoed strangely in the deep silence of the forest. She didn’t need to find the way back. William’s footprints were right there in the snow.