The Grace Year(86)

“Tonight, I’m going to stay here, hidden on the ridge,” I say as I pick up the harness to show her. “I need to see it with my own eyes first.”

“Fine,” she says, putting her hands on her hips. “Then I’m staying with you.”

“You can’t.” I drop the rope.

“Of course I can. I’m a part of this now.”

“This isn’t a game.” I grab her by the shoulders. “You don’t know what they’re like … what they do to us.” Her face goes ashen and I soften my grip. “Besides, I need you to take care of the others. If something happens to me…” I set my jaw. I’m struggling to finish my thought when Gertie rescues me.

“I’ll do it. But I have conditions.”

“Name it.”

“When you’re back, when you’re sure, you need to tell them the truth.”

I open my mouth to argue; she cuts me off. “Nonnegotiable.”

“Fine,” I reluctantly agree.

“And when this is done,” she says, her eyes welling up, “you need to go back to him. You have no choice. You took care of me out here. Now let me take care of you.”

I nod. Anything to get her to stop, to not say another word.



* * *



We spend the rest of the day on the ridge. I show her the garden, telling her about the seeds June sewed into the lining of my cloak, how the storm washed it all away, and the miracle I came back to.

As we share the last summer tomato, we sit on the edge of the spring, talking for hours, until our feet are wrinkled up like old prunes. For a brief moment, I forget about everything, all of the horror we’ve witnessed, but as soon as the sun begins to set, and I have to send her back to the camp, it all comes back to me. That’s the problem with letting the light in—after it’s been taken away from you, it feels even darker than it was before.





As the moon starts to rise, I get into the harness and lower myself over the ridge, just low enough that I’m covered, but high enough that if I stretch my neck, I can still see her bones. It’s torture having to stay still for this long, but at least I have my back turned to the shore, to the tip of Ryker’s shelter that I imagine I can see peeking up through the trees. Even that small thought seems to open up a fresh wound in me. I know Gertie’s right, about everything, but I have to get through this first.

Gripping the rope, I concentrate on what’s in front of me. June’s garden clinging to the hillside. I decide to count everything. What can be more mind numbing than that? Twelve squash, sixty-one beans, eighteen scallions—I do it over and over again until numbers are meaningless, just lines and swirls held together by connective tissue. And when the moon is highest in the sky, and I can no longer feel my legs, I’m thinking about calling it, just going back to the camp, accepting that this was just my imagination getting the better of me, when I hear something splash in the spring. It could be the muskrat hoping for another mollusk, but it sounds bigger than that. Unafraid.

As heavy wet steps climb the ridge, I hear breath. In and out. Out and in. And when the footsteps reach the top of the ridge, that familiar sound swells in my ears: the scratching of the ribbon—slow, steady, deliberate, obsessive—followed by the clattering of bones.

Stretching up to peek over the ledge, I accidentally brush my knee against the hillside, causing a small clump of dirt to tumble to the depths.

I’m holding my breath, hoping I didn’t give myself away, when the scratching sound stops. The bones go still.

Heavy steps walk straight toward me. I’m clinging to the ropes, praying I’m hidden enough in the darkness to avoid being seen. But the moon is so bright. Fertile. Relentless.

The tip of a boot edges over the ridge. I’m afraid to look up. Afraid not to.

As I slowly raise my eyes, a breeze rushes in from the west, causing the charcoal-gray fabric to billow over me, hiding me from sight, covering me in a darkness so deep that it feels like I’m in a freefall.





When I come to, there’s an eerie red glow shining over the horizon. At home, we call this a devil’s morn. They say if you’re caught in this light, great misfortune will come your way. But what could be worse than this? I must’ve passed out, but if he’d seen me, I’d be dead right now. I guess I owe my life to the western wind. To Eve. Maybe we’re even now.

As I pull myself up to the ridge and crawl out of the harness, I feel like a woman who’s been lost at sea for years. My body aches, the indentations from the ropes feel like they’ll never recover, my legs and arms tingle as if they’ve been asleep for days, but that’s nothing compared to what’s been done to her.

Dragging my body over to the dead girl’s remains, I have to choke back the bile clinging to the back of my throat. There, for everyone to see, the girl’s bones have been laid out in painstaking detail, spread-eagle with two black calla lilies placed in her eye sockets—the flower of ill will. Death. “Legs spread, arms flat, eyes to God,” I whisper.

As I pluck the bad omens from her eyes, I notice the dark red stain smeared across the mandible, all the way around, where her lips would’ve been.

Spitting on the bottom of my chemise, I’m trying to rub it away, when I realize it’s blood.