The Grace Year(31)

“I think I did once,” Helen says, from the bed on the other side of me.

I turn to see her with her knees pulled to her chest, like my younger sister Penny does during a storm.

“But my mother put a stop to that,” Helen adds, skimming her fingers over the ruler-sized scars on the top of her feet.

It makes me think of my own mother. She knew I had the dreams, but she never punished me for them. I never really thought about that before now.

“What do you dream of?” Gertrude asks.

I think about telling them that I dream of ponies and a dashing husband, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t think I realized until this moment how I’ve been aching to share my secret … to feel connected to someone of my own sex … friends. Maybe they’ll believe me. Maybe they won’t. But I have to take that chance. “I dream of a girl.” I glance up at them, trying to gauge their expressions.

“Oh,” Helen says, a flush creeping into her cheeks.

“No. Not like that.” And suddenly, I’m the one embarrassed by the suggestion.

“Go on,” Gertrude whispers.

“She has eyes like mine, but her hair is dark and shorn close to her scalp. She has a small strawberry mark under her right eye. At first, I thought she must be a half sister from the outskirts—”

“That’s why you stopped to look at them like that,” Gertrude says.

“Yes,” I whisper, surprised by how observant she was. “But she wasn’t there.”

“What does she do in your dreams?” Helen asks, nuzzling the dove under her chin.

“Usually, she leads me through the woods to a gathering.”

“What kind of gathering?” Martha props herself up on her elbow.

I want to shut it down, stop talking, but as I look at her eager face, I think, What do I have to lose at this point?

“It’s all the women—wives, maids, laborers, even the women from the outskirts, they’ve all come together, a red flower pinned above their hearts—”

“What kind of flower?” Molly whispers from two beds away.

I look over to find eyes on me from every direction. They appear to be hanging on every word, but I don’t stop.

“It’s a flower with no name. Five tiny petals with a deep red center. There’s something about it that’s so familiar, and yet I can’t tell you where I’ve seen it before. But I think Mrs. Fallow was holding one between her fingers when she stepped off the gallows. And I think I saw a petal threaded into the hair of a woman in the outskirts. There was one on the path from the shore to the gate. Did anyone else see it?” I ask, my heart fluttering at the possibility.

They look around at each other and shake their heads.

As if sensing my disappointment, Gertrude adds, “But we weren’t looking for it.”

I stare at the door. “Tonight, the dream was different, though. I wasn’t home, in the county … I think I was here … in the woods.”

“Was it scary?” Lucy asks, hugging her blanket.

I nod. I don’t know why, but my eyes are wet.

“I wonder if that’s your magic,” Nanette says, her brow buried in deep thought. “The dreams … the girl … the flower. Maybe you can see the future.”

There was a time when I wanted that to be true, more than anything, but in this last dream, there were no encouraging words, no comfort of the crowd. It was just the two of us in the dark woods. I’m trying not to let my imagination get the best of me, but I can’t help wondering if she was trying to tell me something. If she was trying to show me how I’ll die.

Pressing my palm against my stomach, I stretch out my fingers the same way I saw Kiersten do on that first night. “It doesn’t feel like magic. Do you feel anything?”

“Not yet,” Helen says. “But Kiersten—”

“Remember when Shea Larkin got those red itchy welts a few summers back and they got infected and she nearly died, and then all the other girls in her year fell down with the same?” I ask.

They look at each other and nod.

“They said it was a curse, that one of the girls came into her magic early, hid it and infected the others. My father treated them all, said the other girls itched themselves raw, but there were no welts to be found.”

“Are you saying they were faking it?” Martha asks.

“No. I think they truly believed it,” I say as I glance in Kiersten’s direction. “And that’s the scariest thing of all.”





The sun seeping through the rough-hewn logs fills the air with glittering dots of moted light. If I didn’t know they were flecks of pollen from long-forgotten weeds, or dead skin from grace year girls long past, I might call it beautiful.

There’s something about it that makes me hold my breath, as if breathing it in might infect me with whatever they had, lead me to the same bitter end—just another stacked-up, mattress-less frame—a flaccid red ribbon nailed to the gate.

Easing out of bed, I slip on my boots and tiptoe through the maze of cots. My body aches from the journey, the spent adrenaline lingering in my muscles, or it could just be from the unforgiving springs crushing my spine, but all I want to do is find a soft bed of pine needles and sleep the day away.