The Grace Year(83)

“Missing something?” she asks.

“Helen,” I say with a deep sigh as I get to my feet and head to the lodging house. She’s got to stop doing this. Sneaking around, taking people’s things. I don’t want to get cross with her, but she needs to straighten up if she’s going to make it back in the county.

As I pass the well, I glance down and catch my reflection, a bright red slit running across my throat. Doubling back, I stare into the water. Then my fingers fly to my neck, cringing when they graze against the silk.

Tugging at it, I’m trying to free myself, but it’s knotted so tight I can’t get it loose. I’m fumbling with the knot, but it only seems to make the ribbon coil tighter.

I’m leaning over, fighting for air, when I see Kiersten’s reflection directly behind me.

“Careful, now,” she says as she reaches her hands around my throat, deftly untying the knot. “Poacher’s Kiss,” she whispers in my ear.

“What?” I gasp, bracing myself against the side of the well.

“That’s the name of the knot,” she says, lacing the ribbon around my wrist, fashioning a gentle bow. “The harder you pull, the tighter it gets.”

“How do you know that?” I ask, staring at her reflection in the water.

“The last time I saw someone stare into the water like that, I made them drown. You remember Laura, don’t you?”

I swallow hard.

“As I recall, you didn’t think my magic was the cause … you didn’t think our magic was real at all.”

“I was wrong,” I whisper as I turn to face her. “That was before I went into the woods. You helped me understand.”

She looks me dead in the eyes. I can’t help the shiver racing over my flesh. I thought the large black pupils were scary, but now that her irises have returned, the cool blue hue is even more chilling.

Whether she’s the one who did this or not, she’s remembering.

As she walks away, I can’t help wondering how long it will take until Kiersten remembers that she wants me dead.



* * *



As I set out for the spring, the ridge, I don’t look at the bones. I don’t listen to the ribbon scraping against her neck. I keep to what I know to be true. The land doesn’t lie.

Lowering myself over the ridge, I notice the tomatoes, squash, and peppers have given way to turnips, broccoli, and beans. The sumac leaves near the shore have just started to turn. Even the air feels crisper. The season is on the verge of change. So am I.

I’ll never forget Ivy returning from her grace year. When she staggered back into the square, I didn’t even recognize her. Clumps of her hair were missing; her eyes looked unreal, like the large buttons from Father’s winter coat. She collapsed in the square before her husband even got her home. There was a time when they thought she wouldn’t make it.

They let me sit with her once, while my father spoke with her husband about her care. I remember leaning in close to look at her, trying to decide if it was really her. I thought maybe she’d shed her skin out there, like the changelings from the old fairy tales. I think that’s what always scared me the most about the grace year, that I would somehow lose myself, come back an entirely different person.

We just get better at hiding things.

I used to wonder how the women could turn a blind eye to things in the county, things that were happening right in front of them, but some truths are so horrifying that you can’t even admit them to yourself.

I understand that now.

On the way back to the camp, when I hear a twig snap behind me, I don’t stop to listen, to wonder, I just keep pushing the cart down the path. I’m the one who gives this thing power, and I’m not willing to do that anymore. No more games. No more distractions.

Tonight, as we settle around the fire, and they ask me what the ghosts are saying, I reply, “I don’t hear them anymore.”

It’s for the good of the camp. For the good of me.

There’s a long pause. A silence so loud I can feel it echoing around the campfire, like a dying ember begging to be reignited.

I’m thinking this is it, the end of all this, when Jenna sits up tall, staring into the woods. “I hear them now. Ever since I started drinking the ghost water.”

“Me, too,” Ravenna chimes in.

“So do I,” Hannah says, nodding her head so fast that it reminds me of a bird getting ready to feed its young.

And then one after another they begin telling ghost stories of their own. Far more terrifying than anything I could ever come up with.

Gertrude looks at me, confusion in her eyes.

But I get it.

The hemlock silt simply helped them see what they already believed.





I wake to footsteps in the clearing. It’s probably Helen; she has a tendency to wander at night. I’m waiting for one of the girls to get up and fetch her, but they never do. They’ve grown tired of babysitting her. We all have. As I get up to open the door, I hear the scratching sound of the ribbon enter my bloodstream. I want to tell myself it’s just Kiersten trying to scare me, but I feel a dark presence oozing from beneath the door.

The handle of the larder door compresses. I’m bracing myself, ready to come face-to-face with whatever’s been haunting me, when a blood-curdling scream rings out from the direction of the lodging house. Gertie snaps awake. I’m yanking on the door trying to open it, but the wood must still be swollen. By the time I finally get it open, I only catch a glimpse of a figure moving past the perimeter, like a passing shadow.