“Oh, you know, teased her because she was poor, probably said stuff about never brushing her hair. I mean, come on, you should have seen the girl. She looked like wolves had raised her. Her sister lives in town, though, and she’s as sweet as ice cream. Arlene Hester. But I’m not sure what this has to do with Veronica?”
Jesse shook his head.
“It probably doesn’t, but someone mentioned Stephen Kaiser left town around the same time, so I wanted to ask.”
“You think they ran off together?” Tony asked, a hopeful tinge in his voice. “I’d have a half a mind to slap her upside the head if that were true, but man, I wish it were. We had a funeral for her in 1955, on the ten-year anniversary. My parents have burial plots at Pine Grove Cemetery, and they wanted their daughter beside them when the time came. We buried a casket with her favorite dress and a stuffed bear she’d had since she was a baby. One of the worst days of my life,” he muttered, and the bit of hope in his voice had soured.
“Are your parents still alive?” Jesse asked.
“My mom is,” Tony said. “My dad died three years ago, heart attack. He knows now. Sometimes I think about that. One way or another, he knows.”
Chapter 32
September 1945
Liv
George set a plate in front of her. A bloody organ lay in the center of the tin plate.
“The boar’s heart. Eat it, Volva. You will need his courage.”
Liv shook her head.
She had eaten the hearts of many things. George had been feeding her the organs of animals since she was a child, but usually he prepared a soup or made it palatable in some way. This one was raw and cold.
“I’ve been having dreams, child.”
George faced her across the table.
She’d returned his book to the hollow beneath the floor, but it seemed to pulse with energy. Could George sense it?
“What kind of dreams?” she asked, pushing the heart around on the plate. Her stomach gurgled at the sight.
“Dark spirits are courting you, Volva. Eat the heart.”
“No, I can’t. I’ll get sick.”
George pushed the plate closer.
“There are trials ahead for you, my child. Eat the heart.”
She saw the set of his jaw, the hard-flinty edge in his eyes. Holding her breath, she lifted the heart and took a bite. Blood squirted into her mouth and she gagged, dropping the heart and pushing away from the table.
“No, I can’t. I’m not going to.”
She grabbed a rag from the basin and wiped at her face.
The heart lay in the center of the table.
“How will you have the strength to perform a curse without courage, Volva? Hmm…?”
He watched her impassively.
Liv glanced toward his bed, where the book of spells lay beneath the floorboards.
“Did you think I wouldn’t know? Did you think I didn’t know days before you took it?”
“Stephen wanted to see it. That’s all. We’re not going to curse anyone, George. I swear. I-”
He held up a hand, but it was the expression of disappointment in his face that silenced her.
George shook his head.
“The old ways will protect you, Volva. But if you turn away from them, if you cannot prostrate yourself at the feet of the wise ones…” He trailed off. He took her seat at the table and pulled the plate over, cutting a bite from the organ and putting it into his mouth.
They did not speak as he ate. When he finished, Liv cleaned his plate and returned it to the cupboard.
“We will celebrate the winter nights next week.”
Liv nodded, gazing through the window toward trees shifting from green to gold.
Stephen would leave for school soon. Her gut ached at the thought. She imagined the spells in George’s book. There were ways to make him stay, but she’d never dare.
* * *
Liv stumbled when she saw them - Stephen and Veronica sitting together at the Silver Spoon Diner.
The toe of her worn shoe caught on the edge of the sidewalk and she plunged forward, landing on her hands and knees. Pain streaked through her limbs, and she climbed gingerly to her feet. Her knees were scraped and bloody; her hands matched. She brushed the tiny stones embedded in her palms back to the ground, and then looked again at the window.
Stephen and Veronica watched her, their half-empty cream sodas sitting before them on the table.
Veronica’s face melted with delight. Liv could see the bob of her dark head as she laughed. Stephen did not smile, his expression pitying, but he did not come to her aid.
Stephen had left for school two weeks before.
And now, here he sat with Veronica.
Liv’s face grew hot, and she wanted to turn and run back the way she’d come, but she didn’t. Tilting her chin up, the abrasions on her knees throbbing each time she bent her legs, she walked down the street. Tears threatened, but she held them back.
She imagined sitting with George in the peaceful quiet of the Stoneroot Forest. He often spoke of emotion as a spirit who crept into the body and stole reason. The spirit rejoiced in chaos. If Liv cried, the spirit would celebrate and return again to steal her power.
She stopped at the little schoolhouse Arlene attended.
Her sister squealed and jumped from the circle of children when she saw Liv. She raced across the yard and crashed into her legs.
“Whoa,” Liv said, wincing. “How was your day, peanut?” She patted her sister’s blonde curls.
“Are you hurt, Livvy?’ Arlene asked, touching a finger to Liv’s bloody knee.
“Just a scratch,” Liv assured her, though the pain in her heart felt much deeper.
She steered the little girl toward home.
“Did you know that Mrs. Bartleby’s son lost his leg in France in the War to End All Wars?” Arlene chirped. “He’s a hero. All the kids think so. And he has twin sons that are only a year younger than me. Funny they called it the War to End all Wars because we’re at war again.”
Arlene prattled on as they took the dusty two-mile walk home.
Liv only half-listened. She couldn’t erase the image of Stephen and Veronica together at the diner. Each time she pictured them, her stomach grew tight.
* * *
“Hey!” Liv heard Stephen’s call as he stripped off his clothes and ran down the dock.
He dove into the lake and barely rippled the water.
Liv swam away. She reached the weedy shore and climbed out. By the time his head broke the surface, she’d shuffled into her clothes and shoved her wet feet into her shoes.
“Hey! Where are you going?” he asked.
She didn’t answer, but turned and walked into the woods. She fanned her shirt away from her clammy skin. It wouldn’t dry anytime soon. She hadn’t even shaken off before putting her clothes on.
“Liv! Wait up.” Stephen ran up beside her, barefoot and wearing only his Jockey shorts.
Liv didn’t look at him. The tears she’d felt at the cafe the day before struggled up from her belly. They wanted to pour forth. She stuffed them deeper.
“Liv, stop!” He grabbed her arm and tugged her to face him.
She saw hurt and confusion in his pale blue eyes. She wondered what he saw in her own.
“Why are you upset, Liv?”
She swallowed and jerked her shoulder back, pulling her arm out of his grasp.
She opened her mouth, and a little sob fell out. It seemed to flop on the forest floor between them, limp and strange.
She closed her eyes and tried again.
“You were with her. With Veronica.”
When she opened her eyes, Stephen had a funny little smile on his face.
“Of course I was, Liv,” he said. “It’s all part of the plan. How are we going to kill her if we don’t befriend her first?”
“Damn it, Stephen!” she cried. “We’re not killing her. It’s all a joke. I saw her. She was laughing at me.”
When he pulled her to face him, she saw a flush in his cheeks.
“Liv,” he murmured. “I invited Veronica to the diner to ask her to the Halloween party. I would never go out with her. I hate her. I hate her for you.”
He stepped closer to Liv. His breath pushed hot against her cheek. His hand slid from her wrist to her upper arm. If he moved any closer, her breasts would press against him.
His eyes were so pale now, a blue that reminded her of stones in the river, polished nearly white but still holding a remnant of their original color.
He leaned in, his mouth parted, and she jerked back, stumbling. She tripped over a root and landed hard on her butt.
Without a word, she jumped up and ran away from him into the forest.
She didn’t stop running until she reached the railroad tracks near the shacks.
Only then did she pause and bend over. Her stomach cramped, and she thought she might throw up. After a few breaths, the feeling passed.
Her body buzzed with the sensation of his touch, and too with the shame of her reaction. She’d run away. She’d never kissed a boy.
Well, twice little Henry Pools, who lived in a house near hers as a child, had kissed her, but both times she’s slugged him in the arm and told him if he ever did it again, he’d have a black eye to show for it.
But Stephen was different. He was eighteen, on the cusp of being a man, and she was seventeen, almost a woman.
Liv’s mother had tried to tell her as much more than once. She’d fussed with her hair or looked at Liv’s shabby clothes and insisted she’d make her new ones as soon as they could afford it. They never could, and Liv had never cared. Except now as she looked down at the frayed men’s shirt, her nipples poking through the fabric, she felt horribly plain. Worse than plain.
Veronica was the kind of girl Stephen was meant to go steady with. Veronica with her coiffed chocolate curls and her pouty red lips.
Liv’s only defining trait was George, and he was a secret. The volva existed in the Stoneroot Forest. Only there did Liv feel special.
* * *
The next day, Stephen found her at the pond.
He sat heavily on the dock.
Liv’s feet dangled in the water and she watched a school of minnows nipping at her toes.
“Have you forgiven me yet?” he asked, holding out a piece of chocolate.
She took the chocolate and ate it in one bite, ignoring the flicker in her belly as his hand grazed hers.
“Now I have,” she laughed.
He nudged her with an elbow.
“I’ve missed you, Liv. It’s been weird not seeing you every day.”
“For me too. How’s college?” She hated that Stephen had left for school. She hated returning to her own school and trudging through the halls each day feeling more alone than ever, but she said none of those things.
“It’s great. My roommate is a total cold fish, but I’m swamped with studies, so I’m not exactly looking for a pal. Plus, I’ve been working on our curse. Halloween can’t come soon enough.”
Liv looked at him sideways.
“Working on it?”
Yeah, practicing. We don’t want to screw it up and give her sweet dreams by accident.”
Liv forced a laugh but felt no humor as she envisioned Veronica. The girl had been watching her since school started. Every time Liv passed her, Veronica whispered to one of her girlfriends, and they broke into peals of laughter.
“I won’t see you the weekend before Halloween,” Liv told him. We’re celebrating Vetrnaetr, winter nights.”
“Vetra-nater?” he asked, sounding it out slowly.
“It’s an old Norse holiday. We give thanks for summer, prepare for winter, that kind of thing.”
“So, tell me about it.”
Stephen reclined on the dock, bending his knees. Liv laid beside him, noticing the warmth of his arm pressed against hers.
She gazed into the blue sky thick with wooly clouds and sighed, feeling happier than she had in weeks.
“We feast on winter nights,” Liv murmured, putting a hand on her belly. “George prepares roast deer and hog, sweet apples, and mashed yams. We drink honey mead. It’s the only night all year that George drinks alcohol. And then we stay up late and tell stories by the fire. Our holiday is small compared to the winter nights in Norway. His entire village came together in a big mead hall. There was barely room to rest your hands, the tables were so filled with food. In George’s little village, everyone practiced seidr, or Norse magic, but Amma was their primary Volva. She was the mother of the mountain on their island. She spoke during winter nights and then chose the storytellers. They feasted until dawn, and then slept the following day.”
Stephen rolled to his side.
“Why did George leave Norway? It seems like he was happy there. Why would he come here?” Stephen wondered.
Liv watched the clouds and thought of George’s explanation for why he’d left.
“He was called,” Liv murmured. “One morning he went to the ocean to fetch crabs, and the ocean told him he would sail to America.”
Stephen cocked an eyebrow.
“For what, though? To live in a cabin in the woods?”
Liv traced the outline of a cloud shaped like an arrow with her finger.
“To create me,” she whispered.
Chapter 33
September 1965
Liv
“I’ve decided what I have to do, Liv. I have to keep you alive, but I can’t risk your destroying all that I’ve created.”
Liv listened, chin resting on her chest, a line of saliva dripping from the corner of her mouth.
Her brain drifted somewhere in the space above her neck. A big cottony thing, unable to follow complex sentences.
“Meet me at the pond?” she asked, trying to lift her gaze, but her head, despite its lightness, stayed put. She tried again, but managed only to crane her eyes upward and find Stephen sitting on a wooden chair beneath a too-bright light.
He studied her; his mouth turned down.
“Shall I read your fortune, Stephen?” she asked, flopping her head to the side and resting her bleary eyes on his face.
He narrowed his eyes.
“I don’t have time for children’s games.”
She laughed and her eyes rolled back in her head.
“You’re going to lose her, Stephen.”
Who?” he asked, a mixture of irritation and curiosity in his voice.
“The woman who speaks with ghosts.”
Stephen stiffened.
“And then,” Liv babbled, “you’re going to lose yourself.”
She laughed a loud, shocking laugh that made Stephen drop the vial of medicine clutched in his hand.
It shattered on the floor, but he didn’t pick it up.
The door cracked open behind him.
“Dr. Kaiser?” A man spoke, and Liv tried to focus on the figure who stepped into the room.
“Is this your-”
But Stephen cut him off.
“Get out, get out!” he screeched and shoved the doctor back out the door.
He fumbled across the metal table, sending bottles and vials skidding to the floor. He plunged a syringe into a glass tube and then stuck it into Liv’s neck.
“I can make you sleep forever if I want, Liv. How would you like that?” He put a hand to his temple.
Liv saw the red blood vessels running through the whites of his eyes, the deep creases in his forehead.
She struggled to keep her eyes open, to watch his unraveling, but his drugs worked quickly. She drifted down.
* * *
Mack
“Can I get a pass to go outdoors?” Mack tapped Edmund, the regular orderly in his ward, on the shoulder. The man jumped up and swung around as if he me
ant to strike Mack.
Mack stepped back and held up his hands.
Edmund, big and burly and hardly the type to scare, looked at him apologetically.
“Sorry, Mack. Everyone’s on edge today. No grounds passes until further notice.”
Mack frowned and wandered over to two men whispering by the game table. One man, a newcomer named Riley, was talking fervently and gesturing with his hands. The second man, a little guy named Travis, with pointed features and a diagnosis of manic disorder, gave Mack a significant look when he approached.
“What’s got everyone so hot and bothered?” Mack asked.
“Riley here,” Travis forked his thumb at the new guy, “was just telling me there was an escape last night, and a murder.”
“Say what?” Mack’s stomach dropped, and he thought of Liv.
Riley nodded in big, sweeping motions that sent his long silky hair flinging back and forth dramatically. He was a kid, no more than twenty, but he commanded a room. Ward Six had been abuzz since he’d arrived two days earlier.
He leaned into Mack, elated to share the inside scoop.
“The blonde fox from Ward Five split, man. She escaped!”
Mack shook his head, puzzled.
“The blonde who?“
“Sophia!” Travis told him, as if it were obvious.
Riley did another outlandish nod.
“But that ain’t the half of it,” Travis cut in. “Tell him.”
“Let me take a breath, old-timer,” Riley told him, adding an extra-long pause into his story. “They found Kent dead in her room. Murdered!”
Now both men watched Mack in anticipation.
Mack plastered on the appropriate look of dismay, and he was dismayed. He liked Kent, the orderly who generally worked the womens’ ward but always had a kind word for everyone. He also knew, without any of the facts, that Sophia didn’t kill him, though from the looks on Travis and Riley’s faces, the rumor mill was saying otherwise.
“And something else to wet your whistle,” Riley added, a conspiratorial gleam in his eye. “I saw Kaiser and his nurse Alice smuggle a woman into the operations corridor last night. They locked her in there.”
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