SelfSame

by Conway, Melissa

After Paula dropped Luanne at the bus stop, Sorcha climbed into the front seat and said, “‘Gluteus maximus?’ Seriously?”

  Paula laughed and said, “Shut up.”

  “No, really,” Sorcha persisted. “What happened to your undying love for Dalton Boyle?”

  It was the crush to end all crushes. Four long years Paula had pined for the boy next door. It drove Sorcha crazy that instead of trying to get to know him, Paula bolted in the opposite direction whenever she saw him. Her excuse was that she was terrified of making a fool of herself, but Sorcha secretly thought Paula was afraid she’d find out the real Dalton didn’t measure up to the one who’d lived so long in her fantasies. Having spoken to him on more than one occasion, Sorcha was pretty sure he couldn’t possibly.

  “I’m infatuated, not dead,” Paula replied.

  The rest of the morning felt like a déjà vu of the day before. Usually, she preferred Sorcha’s life, but today her classes, teachers and classmates were all filler serving as a minor distraction from her dark thoughts of Enid’s future. She was wholly focused on the problem of locating the site of Jedediah’s cabin, and by lunchtime, had resolved to visit the area in person. For that, she needed transportation.

  At lunch, Paula joined her on the stage and flipped the latch on her Little Kitty lunchbox. As she went to work spreading soft cheese on a cracker, Sorcha debated how to go about convincing her to go on a field trip. Tentatively, she asked, “So what are you doing after school?”

  “Today?” Paula said through a mouthful of cracker.

  “No, in the year 2525. Yes, today.”

  Paula shrugged, but then her brows wrinkled. “You need a ride?”

  Sorcha nodded.

  Paula took a swig of her strawberry milk, burped delicately and said, “Where we going? Indian museum?”

  “Is that alright?”

  “Luanne said it was closed. You planning on breaking in?”

  Sorcha looked away without answering. Ben Webster was sitting in the same spot as yesterday, but there were two new faces at his table – both girls who appeared to be hanging on his every word. With the girls’ flirtatious smiles to look at, there was no danger of him glancing up and catching her eye, so she studied him. His left eyebrow kept disappearing into the lock of dark hair curving across his forehead, but otherwise, his face was nearly expressionless. There was something about the way he moved his head when he spoke, however, that told her how much he was enjoying the attention. Probably hadn’t hung out with many females in the two years he’d been incarcerated at juvenile hall.

  “Earth to Sorch,” Paula said. “Come in, Sorch.”

  Sorcha let out a small laugh and looked back at her friend. As if the last minute or so hadn’t passed without a response, she said, “No I don’t want to break in. Just look around a little.”

  Paula shrugged again. “Your wish is my command.”

  They were late getting started because Paula had a little accident in Art, her last class of the day. Apparently, someone found it amusing to set an open tube of acrylic paint on her chair and she’d sat on it, squirting Thalo Blue all down her jeans. Sorcha helped her rinse the worst of it out in the bathroom sink.

  “Who did it?” she asked.

  Paula snorted. “Dunno, but Kristin Barber sure thought it was funny.”

  “She’s just jealous because you can paint circles around her.”

  “I’d like to paint a circle around her – with a pentagram in it. Send her back to the dimension from whence she came.”

  Kristin had moved to the area from California two years ago and quickly established herself as the reigning Popular Girl complete with bitchy reputation – destined to crush her competition under stiletto heels on the path to obtaining the Homecoming crown. Sorcha and Paula secretly referred to her and her cronies as the Cliché Clique because there was one in every school. For Sorcha and Paula, though, Kristin and her friends were like mosquitos, easily brushed off and forgotten.

  On the drive, Sorcha briefly filled Paula in on Enid’s day trip to Jedediah’s cabin. Paula knew better than to ask many questions afterward, and they fell into a pensive silence as the countryside flew by. Sorcha gazed out the window at the bright fall foliage, thinking that any day now the trees would be bare and the ground frozen solid. A lone bicyclist on the dirt path paralleling the highway caught her eye as he hit a mound at full speed and launched into the air. His backpack lifted off his back and slammed back down as he nailed the landing. She saw his face, bright with victory. Ben.

  She turned away and studied the terrain as they drove onto the exit leading to Cliffside condominiums. They’d been built right up against the steeply rising hill where Jedediah’s cabin once sat. The Indian Artifact Exhibition building was located at the far eastern edge of the property, on a strip of ungroomed grass and trees that contrasted sharply with the neatly trimmed patches of landscaping between each condo unit.

  Paula parked on the side of the road and they got out of the car and approached the small abandoned building. Cans, bottles and cigarette butts littered the area, testimony to its popularity as a party place.

  Sorcha paced up the wooden ramp and tried the door. Locked. The two tiny windows on either side had been boarded up. They walked around the whole building, but it was tightly sealed against intruders.

  “What did you expect to find?” Paula asked.

  Sorcha frowned. “Nothing, I guess. Thought I’d check just in case. That’s where I really wanted to go.” She pointed to a thin, overgrown path that led away from the museum, up the rocky slope, and disappeared somewhere behind the condos.

  “You don’t want to go up there.” The voice came from behind and both girls whirled around. Ben stood there, shoulder-length hair blown back from the wind of his bike ride.

  “Why not?” Sorcha met his eyes, challenging.

  “Well, it’s private property for one thing. Plus, there’s a homeless old Indian dude who camps out up there every winter.”

  The girls exchanged a startled look before Sorcha turned back and lifted her chin. “How do you know?”

  “He’s my uncle.”

  “I thought your uncle was in jail,” Paula said.

  “Different uncle.” His head tilted to the side. “Oh, hey, you’re Paula, right? You gave Loony a ride this morning.”

  ‘Loony’ must be his sister Luanne’s nickname. “Yeah,” Paula said. “This is Sorcha.”

  Ben’s dark eyes lingered on Sorcha’s face for only a moment. He didn’t say anything; just pushed his bike over to the museum entrance ramp, wrapped the chain around one of the posts and clicked the lock. With his backpack slung over one shoulder, he strode past them up the narrow path. He’d walked ten yards or so before looking back. “You coming?”

  Sorcha and Paula exchanged another look, more alarmed than the first, but Sorcha couldn’t afford to hesitate. She followed him, skipping a little to catch up. Paula brought up the rear.

  Ben didn’t chit-chat on the hike up the rocky hillside and for that Sorcha was grateful. The déjà vu she’d been plagued with all day was back in full force. Her surroundings were far from identical, but her inner perspective kept shifting to Enid’s memories of the ride on Jedediah’s mare; the jolting and the odors and the apprehension. When they reached the top, Ben turned to her and that eyebrow of his disappeared into his hair.

  “You okay?”

  She consciously relaxed her face, knowing she’d been sneering in distaste at the memory of being close to Jedediah. “Yeah, fine.”

  “You look like you’re gonna yak.”

  Sorcha felt Paula’s hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off and moved past Ben to stare at the landscape. Her feet moved practically of their own accord, one step after another until she was standing where the cabin had been. In her mind’s eye, she saw the headstone through the window.

  In her peripheral consciousness, she heard Ben ask Paula, “What’s she looking at?”

  There was nothing to look a
t: the ground was completely bare, not even an outline of the cabin’s frame remained. Sorcha walked on, straight through the invisible walls out across the rocky, packed dirt with its patches of dying grass. When she reached general area where the headstone had been, she began kicking at the ground with the toe of her boot.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Ben asked. “Sorcha.”

  It was the first time he’d said her name and for some reason it broke through her trance. She looked at him and took a deep breath that came out in a heavy sigh. “I’m searching for a gravestone.”

  His head went back in surprise. Paula shot her a warning look.

  Ben spread his hands as his lips twisted in a sardonic smile. “I’ve lived here my whole life and haven’t ever seen a gravestone. If you want, we can ask my Uncle Harry. He’s gotta be around here somewhere.”

  Disappointment swept over her. “It was stupid to come here,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  She stalked past Ben and Paula on numb legs, only her determination and the steepness of the path compelling her forward.

  Chapter Four

  Enid

  The transition from sleep to wakefulness was as seamless as ever with one exception: Enid’s morning was marred by the sensation of being shaken roughly. Her eyes opened to Aggie’s worried face and the words, “Wake up, Miss. Wake up!”

  Enid pushed the slave girl away and sat upright. “What is it?”

  “Ye wouldn’t wake. It’s like ye was dead!”

  “Yes, yes. I wake when I wake, and you’d do well to remember that.” Enid spoke more sharply than she intended, but Aggie’s urgency curled her empty stomach into a ball of dread. “What’s wrong?”

  “Yer father, Miss. Soldiers came to the door last night and took him off! And the old lady – she’s in a bad way.”

  Enid threw the covers back and rushed out of the room, her bare feet thumping down the narrow hallway to Elizabeth’s small room. Her grandmother was in bed, but her upper body was hanging halfway off the straw mattress, face down. For a horrified moment, Enid thought she was dead, but then her frail body began to shake as she coughed. A thin drizzle of crimson spittle hovered over the already bloodstained wooden floor. Elizabeth was feebly gasping for breath between each cough.

  Enid did what she always did when her grandmother was taken by a fit. She snatched her homemade cotton face mask from the mantle and quickly fastened it over her nose and mouth. The fire had died down; she tossed a log and some sticks on and added water to the kettle that normally filled the room with steam. The bottle of medicinal elixir she’d concocted from honey mead and herbs from the garden was almost empty, but she lifted Elizabeth’s torso, wiped her mouth with the bed sheet, and coaxed her into drinking the rest of it.

  Enid supported her grandmother as her painfully thin body contracted into another spasm, patting her on the back to encourage the phlegm to rise. Elizabeth’s nightgown and bedclothes were soaked from night sweats and Enid barked at Aggie to get fresh linens while she gently removed the soiled garments. With the slave girl’s help, she managed to make her grandmother as comfortable as she could.

  “Thank you, Aggie,” she said. “I’m sorry I was cross.”

  Aggie’s dark eyes dropped to the floor as she backed out of the room. “Yes, Miss.”

  Enid settled into the spindly chair next to the bed, the same chair Elizabeth had sat in when Enid was a child demanding to hear the story of her birth.

  “It’s time,” Elizabeth said in a weak voice.

  “Don’t talk,” Enid replied, fearful another coughing fit would result.

  “Send for him now.”

  Enid assumed she meant the pastor and her eyes filled with tears. She stood, but Elizabeth’s skeletal fingers reached for her. Enid took her grandmother’s hand between her own and held it to her breast, waiting. The whites of Elizabeth’s eyes were tinted yellow with streaks of red from vessels that had burst from the force of her coughing.

  “Bear Talker,” she whispered. “Bring the medicine man.”

  It was the last thing Enid expected her to say. Elizabeth had lived out the second half of her life as a devout Christian and was very involved with the church. Enid would have questioned her, but her grandmother fell into a doze, probably induced by the medicine Enid had learned how to make off the Internet in Sorcha’s world. She’d wanted to grow her own batch of mold to use as an antibiotic to cure the tuberculosis, but the process was far too advanced for the instruments available to her in the eighteenth century. All she’d been able to do was extend her grandmother’s life and make her more comfortable as she wasted away.

  She went to her room and dressed as quickly as she could. Downstairs, Aggie handed her a bowl of porridge that she ate without tasting. Everyone knew the old medicine man lived in a longhouse outside the village. He was tolerated because he grew particularly fine tobacco in a secret location and traded it to the men for food and necessities.

  “Who were the soldiers who took my father?” she asked.

  Aggie shook her head. “I don’t know, Miss.”

  “How many were there? What color were their uniforms?”

  “Four, all on horseback, and they was dressed as men always is. They was muhlitia.”

  “Militia?”

  At Aggie’s nod, Enid looked for her father’s long rifle, normally mounted above the back door. It was gone.

  She dropped her head in her hands. “This is bad.”

  She wasn’t worried about him; her father wasn’t due to die for another decade. He was a staunch supporter of the rebellion and she knew from historical records that he would serve in several Revolutionary War campaigns – including the Battle of White Plains almost one hundred miles to the south, which, now that she thought about it, was going to happen any day now. In the back of her mind, she’d known this was coming, but thought her father would have at least prepared her for his leaving. Perhaps the local militia had coerced him into leaving so suddenly. It wasn’t as if he could wake her to tell her he was going, nor could he leave her a note: he could not read or write.

  “Miss, I hear them say they was headed out to Mr. Jedediah’s place.”

  “Did they take the horse?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but immediately muttered, “Of course they did.”

  She hastily finished her porridge. She would be forced to walk to fetch the medicine man, but given her father’s lack of sympathy towards Elizabeth’s illness, she would likely have had to walk whether the horse was here or not. Her father had tolerated her grandmother’s presence only as long as the old woman had been useful. Elizabeth had long contributed to the household income with sales of her beautiful beadwork.

  Enid wrapped her woolen shawl around her shoulders, but before she made it to the door, a timid knock sounded. On the stoop, to her utter dismay, stood Bess - with Jedediah’s children.

  “Yer father sent us,” Bess said. Aggie leaped forward and threw her arms around the woman. The children showed the first emotion Enid had seen, letting out little cries of joy and hugging Aggie fiercely. Over Aggie’s head, Bess said, “There be trouble down south, and they’s gone to fight. We to stay here until they return.”

  “Come in,” Enid said, masking her surprise with politeness. Until her father and Jedediah returned, she was mistress of the household. She turned to Aggie. “Put the children in my room. I’ll stay in Father’s, but the linens will need washing. I must go fetch the medicine man for my grandmother now. Please see to her comfort while I’m gone. Try to get her to eat.”

  Aggie nodded.

  It was cold out, bitterly so, but the sky was cloudless. Enid walked briskly, thinking of her grandmother and happier times. No matter how poor they’d been or how miserably her father had treated her, Elizabeth had been a bright spot in this life. Tears trickled out of her eyes and froze on her cheeks.

  She skirted the village, following along a row of harvested corn through the Hornsby family’s southernmost field and trudging through the
wide marshy meadow beyond. There was no path, so she kept an eye out for the landmark that would tell her she was close; a huge, weather-worn grey rock the size of a bus in Sorcha’s world. When she spotted the stone jutting up from its otherwise flat surroundings, she noticed as she got closer that cracks in the stone made a vague pattern, like the head of a bear with its mouth open wide.

  By the time she reached the medicine man’s longhouse, the sun had heated the frigid air somewhat and the exercise had warmed her. From what her grandmother had told her, the longhouse had once been home to many people, but now, as far as Enid knew, the hermit occupied the large structure alone. Two mangy dogs began barking and rushed to within a few feet of her skirt. She froze in the path and stood very still, avoiding eye contact as they snarled at her, kicking up dust in their fury. A shout from within the structure sent the dogs scrabbling away as quickly as they’d arrived. A tall figure exited the longhouse and strode towards her, musket held casually in his left hand. He was dressed in a coarse linen tunic and pants, and his black hair, what little there was of it, stood straight up in a scalplock on the crown of his shaved head. He was either young enough to have no beard, or clean-shaven. As he got closer, she saw that his nose and ears were pierced with rings of silver. His brown eyes held no welcome.

  He looked her up and down and must have mistaken her for an Indian because he said something in his language. Although she had picked up several Mahican words here and there, her father had forbidden Elizabeth from teaching Enid her mother’s native tongue. She shook her head and said, “I come to speak with Bear Talker.”

  He just frowned, so she tried the word for bear, “Machq?”

  The young man’s frown deepened. “Bear Talker sees no one.”

  “Please. It’s urgent.” She cursed the wavering of her voice, trying to keep her emotions at bay.

  He shrugged as if he couldn’t care less and turned back to the longhouse, leaving her standing there with her mouth hanging open in dismay. A horse whinnied plaintively from somewhere in the trees. She couldn’t go back home with her grandmother’s last request unfulfilled.