Follow Me to Ground(29)

I started right away as there was no need to put him to sleep.

Pulling up his faded shirt I made an arrow of my hand and went inside him, which made Mrs James cry harder. I worked both of my hands beneath the skin and under his ribcage, and she cried harder still.

The swallowed water starting to gather in my hands and I sang to send it away. Mrs James and the men, her other sons, took turns looking up as the ceiling darkened and dripped with heavy, gluttonous lake water drops.

My thoughts did something they shouldn’t have done, which was wander. I couldn’t stop picturing the boy’s brother diving and surfacing, thrashing in the water until the lake was riddled with foam. I saw a stark image of Sister Eel wrapped some seven times around the small body, her snout near his face.

I moved my hands and worked the water out of him, and once it was gone there was only stillness inside of him.

He had died in the lake, and now he was here on our couch with his eyelashes clung together in bands of three or four.

Still I kept my hands moving, hoping to feel in the fibrous lining a glimmer of breath I might fan into gasping and see him sputter, jolt inside his sodden clothes.

I kept on, pushing water out of his lungs and into the ceiling, my hair and shoulders slick from the dripping water and Oliver James, his face held by his mother, made doubly wet again by its fall. I kept on until the quiet in the room was like a hand around my throat, and I realised my wrists were sore, which had never happened before.

–He’s gone too far.

I spoke loudly to cover the wet, sliding sound of my hands coming back to the air.

Mrs James said nothing but rolled up her shoulders, slowly.

I kept seeing things I didn’t want to see.

The ringlets of hair on the side of his face were so slick and fine they might’ve been painted.

Since he’d been laid out on the couch his eyes had turned a deeper shade of green.

He’d a freckle near his mouth that would have been folded into his cheek whenever he smiled.

A hum of confused muttering from the men as they remembered Tabatha Sharpe: a frail baby brought back from the bloody pool of her mother’s panicked womb – Surely, surely, I could fashion a means of revival for this small child? If I could pluck Tabatha out of thin air, and this boy was here in front of me, with everything about him intact … ?

And Father only looked at me in a way that sent his thoughts clear into my head.

This is the cost of your running around, Ada.

Oliver James. Quiet little boy, bathed deep in the green of the lake. Already a body, instead of a boy. No more than a streak of light skin and dark hair between us. His cheeks still puffed as though with stubborn, petulant breath rather than the sickly bloat of Sister Eel’s lake, beaten from above by the rain. Cheeks his mother kept on stroking, thinking she might alleviate their swell and bring back her small, drowned son.

Had I the will to touch him again I might have strummed a quick tune of feathers, with which to close his eyes.

–You could have saved that boy.

I sat down on the couch, still wet.

This room will forever stink of the lake.

That night, of course, I didn’t sleep.

Father was irked with me; it had been a long time since we’d lost a Cure and he felt this one had been lost needlessly. I told him over and over that the boy was too far gone, was already dead, but as the sheets turned knotted and damp around me I wondered if indeed my strength was dripping away.

If Samson trying to work his way into Lorraine was taking a toll on me I couldn’t yet fathom.

My eyes grew heavy and I dreamt half-awake dreams of Oliver James climbing out of the lake or riding Sister Eel like a mare.

And then I dreamt, briefly, of Olivia, who by this time must’ve given birth.

I was in the kitchen with the back door and all the windows open so the smell of rain came in strong. Wet soil and spattered leaves. The heat from the stove was warming my belly and I fanned myself with my dress. I was still tired from Oliver James and my every movement seemed slow. I’d been stirring the pot so long I knew, even after I stopped, the motion would keep on in my shoulder.

I heard Lorraine’s car in the drive. Early, as was her habit now. I thought, Must be the fact of her coming so often. He’s used to her – he can sniff her out, looking at the boiling pot and wanting to dip my hands inside. You need a plan.

But what to do? Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t bring up Samson. Only Father could force anything in that part of The Ground – my putting him there had only worked because it chimed with the weather.

And I didn’t want him to come up before he was ready.

No matter how long it took.

Lorraine was coming up the steps and, before I could put the spoon down, letting herself inside. She was the only Cure to ever do so, and despite myself it made me sad that she thought of us as her family. She’d come here looking for something we couldn’t give her, some kind of closeness she could draw on while she lay in bed. Lay in the dark, alone.

All she’d gotten was Samson slipping inside her to catch a glimpse above ground.

I called

–Be right with you, Lorraine.

–Ada.

I knew right away: her voice that wasn’t her voice. Her voice with a hot tremor inside it. I turned around and there he was, a too-big hand in an ill-fitting glove. The shoulders rolling forward, the slight tilt to the hips.