Black Feathers

by Robert J. Wiersema

  Cassie wasn’t sure if she had heard the words or imagined them.

  “Here,” Ali said, setting the cutting board on the table and picking up the steaming towel between the thumb and forefinger of each hand. “This is going to be hot. Hopefully not too hot.”

  She crouched in front of Cassie, delicately balancing the hot towel between her two hands. “Give me your hands,” she said, lowering the blanket again.

  Cassie considered for a moment before allowing her hands to emerge from within the safety of the blanket like two small, half-blind animals.

  “I’m sorry,” Ali said, cupping the towel and reaching for Cassie’s hands. “This is going to hurt.”

  Cassie choked back a scream, inhaling sharply and clenching her jaw shut.

  Ali glanced up at her face as she wrapped the length of the hot towel over Cassie’s hands, snugging it firmly, but not too tightly around them.

  “Sorry,” she repeated. “We need to bring your skin temperature up fast, though, to minimize any damage.”

  “It’s okay,” Cassie managed, struggling to breathe through the pain. As the heat seeped into her hands, the pins and needles burned, searing, so much worse than the frostbite had been. She closed her eyes to focus on every breath.

  “Okay,” Ali said, mostly to herself. “Let me just—” She turned the water on, letting it run as she fumbled in the drawer beside the sink. “Can you take Advil?”

  As Cassie nodded, her body was racked with an all-over shudder.

  Ali filled a water glass from the tap; Cassie could see thin wisps of steam rising from it as she brought it back to her.

  “Oh.” Ali stood awkwardly in front of her, pills in one hand, the glass in the other. “How are we—”

  Cassie opened her mouth, touched her tongue to the inside of her lower lip.

  Ali looked as if she were about to speak. Instead, she placed the pills carefully on Cassie’s tongue, then held the glass of warm water close to her mouth.

  “It shouldn’t be too hot,” she warned.

  Cassie took a small, careful sip. “It’s all right,” she said.

  “Come on,” Ali said, setting the glass on the table. “Let’s get you lying down.”

  Without even thinking, Cassie rose slowly to her feet, guided and supported by Ali’s soft touch on her back. She started toward the couch, but a soft pressure from Ali’s hand shifted her toward the door at the end of the room.

  “You might as well be comfortable,” Ali said. “Here, sit.” She directed Cassie toward the edge of the bed. “Let’s get your shoes off.”

  Ali knelt at her feet, and struggled with the shoelaces. Through the haze of the pain, Cassie felt a flash of shame, imagining how her feet must smell, picturing the expression about to come over Ali’s face.

  But all Ali did was unlace her shoes and set them at the foot of the bed. “Come on,” she said again, and she helped Cassie down onto the bed, unwrapping the blanket as she turned.

  “You should tuck your hands under here,” Ali said, lifting the edge of the pillow. “It’s gonna hurt a bit.”

  Cassie didn’t even notice.

  The pillow was soft and warm, and smelled faintly of soap and shampoo. The thought of how long it had been since she had slept in a bed, the softness and warmth under her, was enough to make her cry.

  “Let’s just—” Ali laid the blanket over Cassie, then draped the covers gently over her, tucking them close under her chin.

  Cassie could feel tears leaking from her eyes, spilling down her cheeks, soaking into the pillow.

  “Is that all right?” Ali asked, stepping back from the bed.

  Cassie nodded against the pillow, her eyelids suddenly, unexpectedly heavy.

  “That’ll help you warm up,” Ali said, and then her voice softened even more. “You sleep for a bit. I’ll be—”

  “No,” Cassie groaned, and Ali stopped.

  “Could you—” The words were hard to form, harder to speak. “Could you please stay with me?”

  Ali looked down at her for a moment. “Of course,” she said quietly.

  She crawled into the bed from the other side and nestled herself against Cassie’s back. Her arm over her was a comfortable weight, and comfortingly weightless.

  Cassie’s eyelids barely responded to her attempt to hold them open. She blinked heavily, slowly, and wished all of this could be real.

  She blinked again.

  She blinked—

  The bus was noisy, the kids were shrieking, running up and down the aisle, ripping the air with high-pitched squeals and laughter.

  “Jesus,” Cassie muttered, rubbing her temples. “What the hell—”

  Laura touched Cassie’s leg comfortingly. “It’s just the snow. Little kids always flip out on the first day it snows.”

  Snow? That didn’t seem—

  But Laura was right: all the kids were in snowsuits and toques, mittens hanging from strings. The aisle was a slurried muck of melting snow and mud. Outside the bus windows, the landscape was white, vaguely unfamiliar.

  “What’s up with you?” Laura asked. “You look like you’re—”

  “Just a headache,” she said. “I didn’t really sleep …” She could barely remember the dream, let alone talk about it.

  “Did you take something for it?”

  Cassie almost laughed. “What, you’re a doctor now?”

  Laura shoved her with her shoulder. “Screw you.”

  Cassie flinched at the jostling, pulled away.

  “Sorry,” Laura said, as if she had been reprimanded, and she slid farther away on the seat, closer to the window.

  “It’s okay,” Cassie said. “I’m just not feeling good.”

  Laura nodded. “You can lie down in the nurse’s room if you’re—”

  That hadn’t even occurred to her. “I might do that.”

  She had never been in the nurse’s room. Some kids did it all the time: kids who wanted to get out of class, girls with cramps who didn’t want to run laps, kids waiting for their parents to pick them up.

  But her mom didn’t send them to school sick. If she or Heather wasn’t feeling well, Mom would make them soup or cinnamon toast sticks, build a nest for them on the couch.

  So why hadn’t she—

  “You can put your coat and shoes in the cubby,” the nurse was saying, pointing to the shelves on the wall. “Do you want some water?”

  “Yes, please,” Cassie said, sitting down at the edge of the bed to pull her boots off. It was an automatic process, pull and tug, but she stopped. There was something wrong with her right boot.

  Slipping her hand along her shin, she slid her fingers into the top of her boot.

  There was something there, something hard. It took a bit of stretching before she could pinch it between her fingertips, pull it up far enough that she could wrap her fingers around the cool thickness and pull it out.

  She knew what it was. She had always known.

  The kitchen knife felt comfortable in her hand, warming and welcome. It caught the light, and there was a reflection of her eyes in the blade.

  At first, she couldn’t identify the sound, a distant, vaguely metallic blur of voices and noise. As soon as she realized “television,” though, the voices came into focus, and it filled her with warmth. TV. She’d just lie there a little longer, then go downstairs to see Mom and Dad and Heather.

  But …

  Her heart began to speed up.

  This wasn’t her room.

  The winter light through the blue curtains made the whole space seem to glow: the walls, with paintings and posters. The dresser, glossy white. The books along the windowsill.

  She had never seen any of it before, but somehow it felt familiar.

  A towel was crumpled into a damp spot beside the pillow.

  She sat up and looked at her hands. They were pink and tender, but there were no blisters, no angry white patches anymore. The screaming pins and needles were gone, but … Taking a deep breat
h, she bent her fingers, slowly at first. No pain. There was a dull, throbbing ache, like a tired muscle, but no real pain, not even when she clenched her fists.

  She smiled and stood up, eager to tell Ali the good news.

  It was only as she stepped toward the door that everything came flooding back to her: Ali’s place.

  Ali had come looking for her, in the dark.

  How do you thank someone for that? What do you even say?

  Ali had said that she had come looking for her because she was worried after reading about Skylark in the paper.

  No, not Skylark. Laura.

  But …

  Laura wasn’t dead.

  Cassie had just seen her. They had been on the bus, and Laura had gone with her to the office to ask for the nurse …

  It was just a dream.

  Blood vessels started to throb behind her temples, the first distant thunder of a headache coming on.

  Coming back.

  It felt like the headache from her dream. She should talk to the nurse …

  Cassie shook her head, trying to clear it.

  It was just a dream.

  How many times had she said that?

  How often had it actually been true?

  Don’t think about it.

  She could tell the difference now. That was the main thing that Dr. Livingston had taught her, the first thing: how to tell dreams from real life.

  The doctor’s goal had been to have Cassie learn two things. First, dreams are not true. And second, dreams cannot hurt you.

  That was what had saved her.

  It was just a dream.

  And dreams cannot hurt me.

  Taking a deep breath, she turned back to the bed and lifted the blanket that Ali had first wrapped around her. How long ago had that been?

  The blanket was thick cotton, with a pattern of what looked like storybook characters on it. Anne of Green Gables? The Wizard of Oz? It was too faded for her to really tell. The blanket was old—maybe it had been Ali’s when she was little.

  She lifted the corner of the blanket to her cheek and rubbed it gently against her skin. She closed her eyes and held the cloth to her face.

  At the sound of a throat clearing in the other room, she opened her eyes. Draping the blanket over her shoulders like a cape, and with no idea what she was going to say, she stepped out of the bedroom.

  Ali was sprawled on the couch, her legs extended over the coffee table, next to a stack of books. Dressed head to toe in black—T-shirt, jeans, socks—she looked like a shadow on the pale couch.

  “Hi,” Cassie said awkwardly from the bedroom doorway.

  Ali straightened up and turned to her. “Oh, hey. I was just going to come wake you.” She patted the couch next to her. “Come here, sit down. How are you doing?”

  Cassie shuffled over and nestled into the couch next to Ali. “I’m okay, I guess. Strange dreams. I’m sorry I slept so long.” Though she had no idea how long she had been asleep.

  Ali smiled. “You should sleep as much as you can. Get your strength back.”

  “Oh.” Cassie wondered what she had missed. “I thought I’d slept too much. I thought you said you were going to wake me up.”

  “Oh, no,” Ali said, smiling and shaking her head. “No, I was going to get you up to see this.” She pointed at the TV.

  “What is it?”

  Ali picked up the remote control and turned up the volume. “Breaking news. They think they’ve caught the guy.”

  On the television, a heavy-set man was talking to a crowd of reporters. “What guy?”

  “The killer,” Ali said, nodding toward the television. “That’s the police spokesman there.”

  Cassie’s throat closed and she struggled to breathe.

  Between the news and Ali’s answers to what she had missed, Cassie was able to piece together a very sketchy sense of what was going on. There weren’t many details: the police had apprehended a suspect (but they weren’t releasing a name), there was compelling physical evidence (but they weren’t saying what), and they felt confident (but there would be more information later in the afternoon). It wasn’t much, but when Ali was finished, Cassie could only sag into the couch, shaking her head.

  “Wow,” was all she could say.

  “I know, right?” Ali said, not skeptically, but somehow incredulous.

  “When did this happen?”

  Ali pointed at the screen. “Right now,” she said, and Cassie noticed for the first time the word “Live” in the upper corner of the picture.

  They watched the rest of the press conference in silence, then Ali reached up with the remote control and turned off the TV. They both sat there, staring at the dark screen.

  “Well, that’s good news,” Ali said finally, looking at Cassie for a reaction.

  “Yeah,” Cassie said absently, wondering who the police had picked up, thinking back to her dreams. She knew what was real now, and what wasn’t; Dr. Livingston had taught her that.

  And she remembered the way the knife had felt, slipping into Sarah’s throat, the way her blood had hissed as it hit the cold ground, the way Skylark’s eyes had gone wide, the look of shock and betrayal there before they went dark.

  “I wonder who they arrested?” she thought aloud.

  “Well, he was probably the nicest guy. Polite to the neighbours but kept to himself. Spent a lot of time in the basement.” There was a strange half smile on Ali’s face, and it took Cassie a moment to realize that she was making a joke. “Sorry,” Ali said, her face reddening. “Sometimes I make jokes when I’m—”

  Cassie shook her head. “You’re probably right.”

  Ali frowned. “Yeah,” she said. “Hey!” She reached toward Cassie’s hands, then stopped herself. “Can I—”

  “Sure.”

  “How do they feel?” she asked as she lifted Cassie’s right hand gently from her lap, looking at it in the light.

  “Good,” Cassie said, nodding, and Ali repeated the examination with her left hand. “A little achy, like a muscle cramp, but that’s it.”

  “Oh good,” Ali said, setting Cassie’s hand back down and turning herself slightly on the couch so she was facing Cassie. “I’m glad. I was worried.”

  There was that word again: “worried.” She still didn’t know how to respond to it.

  “How long was I asleep for?” she asked, trying to change the subject without being too obvious about it.

  Ali glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. “A few hours,” she said. “I’m surprised you’re up so soon.”

  “I don’t sleep very much.”

  Ali looked at her like she had a question, but she didn’t ask it. “I was going to leave you a note when I went to work,” she said. “And just let you sleep. You know, ‘food in fridge, help yourself. The shower faucets are backward, so don’t scald yourself.’ That sort of thing.”

  Cassie straightened up, found herself looking at the clock as well. “Oh. You have to go to work.”

  Ali nodded, started to rise. “And I’d better get a move on. I got distracted by the news.” She smiled and stepped around the coffee table.

  Cassie struggled to her feet. “I’ll just—” She gestured toward the bedroom. “I think my shoes are—”

  “You don’t—”

  “Is it okay if—”

  “Cassie, you don’t have to—”

  “—brush my teeth real quick before—”

  “Cassie.”

  The flat force of her name on Ali’s lips stopped her short. Ali smiled at her. “You can stay here when I go to work.”

  “But I—”

  Ali shook her head. “It’s ugly outside—there’s no reason for you to be out there if you don’t have to be.” She leaned her head forward, waiting for a response.

  “Okay?” she prompted. “Okay,” Cassie said, nodding slowly.

  Ali smiled widely, all the way to her eyes. “Good.” She sounded almost excited by the idea. “Now,” she said, looking at the clo
ck again, “I’m going to be late if I don’t haul ass. But you make yourself at home, okay? There’s food in the fridge, fruit on the table. There’s stuff for you on the bathroom counter. It’s a great tub if you want to have a long bath.” Her words were speeding up as she bustled around the apartment, pulling on her jacket and boots, picking up her purse, tucking her keys into her pocket.

  She paused. “Are you all right?” she asked. “I could—”

  Cassie shook her head, struggled to find words. “No, I’m okay. It’s just … It’s all a bit …”

  Ali nodded, frowning sympathetically. “Yeah,” she said. “I can’t even imagine.” She wrinkled her face into a smile that couldn’t quite hide her concern. “You just take it easy, all right? Have some breakfast, have a bath, maybe sleep a bit more?” She pulled open the door and a wave of cold broke over the kitchen, stole Cassie’s breath.

  Cassie nodded and Ali stepped into the winter bright, pulling the door closed behind her. A few seconds later there was a faint jangling of keys and a solid thunk as the lock turned.

  In the warm, enveloping silence, Cassie released a breath she hadn’t known she had been holding. It was all too much to process, almost too much to bear.

  She had no idea what to do. She felt frozen to the spot.

  She looked around the room. Pictures hung on every wall. Paintings. A small row of cookbooks ran along a ledge on the kitchen wall; a larger bookshelf and a desk, cluttered with books, were at the end of the room, past the point where the kitchen gave way to the living room area with the couch and TV. There were small sculptures on every surface and mixed in with the books on the shelves.

  Taking a deep breath, she padded over to the kitchen table and sat down in the same chair she had sat in earlier that morning. Pulling the newspaper toward her, she started to read the story about Skylark on the front page.

  What she hadn’t known before was buried deep in the article, almost at the end. Two paragraphs about how Laura Ensley had grown up in Campbell River, how she had been a good student, popular with other students and liked by her teachers. How her parents—who were coming to Victoria to “claim their daughter’s remains”—had no insight into why she had run away, but an unidentified police source had suggested there had been an open Ministry investigation into possible abuse at the time she left.