Bone River

by Chance, Megan

  He looked surprised. “Cut into her? You can’t mean to.”

  “If I don’t, it will be Baird who discovers what’s important about her.”

  “Or that there’s nothing at all,” he said. “Leonie, she’s worth more whole.”

  “Worth more?”

  “I’ve told you that.”

  “Oh. Yes. A curiosity museum.”

  “You should consider it.”

  “If I don’t cut into her, that will be her only worth,” I said bitterly. “I can’t see what it is my father thought about her. I don’t understand what he saw.”

  “Whatever it was, he saw it without cutting her open,” he countered.

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m ready to do it now,” I said, a pure lie; I was feeling sick again at the thought. “Would you fetch me the saw?”

  Daniel took a deep breath. “Yes, of course. As you wish.”

  He turned and went back outside, down the porch steps.

  Lord Tom had been watching our conversation with interest. I said, before he could tell me what he thought, “If I don’t do this, I will have failed the test.”

  “Who is testing you?”

  My father. Junius. The world. It was too big to answer, so I ignored him and put on my coat and my boots. I went out onto the porch, feeling the key in my pocket. I thought of her walking through the long grass, a child on a dirt floor, love and pride and fear, her hair glinting in the sun. I felt a surge of despair—how could I do this thing?

  But I pushed those things away. I knelt and unlocked the trunk. I was opening it when Daniel came striding back up the stairs, the saw in his hand. He said, “I wish you’d reconsider this.”

  “If I can’t do this, I’m not the ethnologist my father meant for me to be.”

  Daniel stepped up beside me. “Old promises, Lea,” he said quietly. “I thought perhaps you’d put them aside.”

  I let the lid fall back. It clunked against the side of the house.

  He said urgently, “I’ve been thinking. I know you love it here. I know you don’t want to leave. What if we didn’t? What if we stayed—the two of us?”

  I looked up at him, frowning. “But...what about Junius?”

  “What about him? We’ll tell him the truth. You said he hated this place.”

  “And you think he’d just walk away?”

  “It’s the noble thing to do, isn’t it?” Daniel asked tightly. “He wants to go anyway—that’s what you said, that he’s tried to go a dozen times already. Why not give him the chance? Why must you be the one making the sacrifice? He’s gained a great deal from twenty years with you. He could give you up. He should give you up.”

  I laughed shortly. “He won’t.”

  “How do you know? Perhaps he loves you enough.”

  “What if he doesn’t?” I asked. “We’ve betrayed him, both of us. What if he refuses—what will you do? Overthrow him like Tiapexwasxwas?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A giant who was killed by his son. But not before that son slept with his father’s wife—his own mother—first.”

  Daniel said impatiently, “You’re not my damned mother, Leonie. For Christ’s sake, what are you waiting for?”

  I looked down at the mummy. “I’m waiting for her,” I said softly, and then I slid my hands beneath her, meaning to lift her out. Something crumbled against my skin. Something like...dust or...no, something gritty. In confusion, I drew back my hand. It was covered with umber flakes. I stared at it for a moment, disconcerted, before I realized what it was.

  Daniel said, “Lea, whatever you think you’ll discover—”

  “No,” I said. I ran my hand down her arm, dislodging flakes, her skin coming off on mine. “Oh no, no, no.”

  “What is it?” Daniel asked. “What’s wrong?”

  I barely heard him. All I could say was “No,” and “No,” again, and my dream filled my head, drowning, my body crumbling, withering, swept away in dust, and panic had me clutching her. “No, please. Not yet. You can’t! I’m not finished. Please, I’m not finished.”

  “Lea, what is it?” Daniel dropped the saw, kneeling beside me.

  “She’s decaying,” I managed. I held out my stained hand to him. “Look! The water...I didn’t keep her dry enough. She’s falling apart, and I’m not finished. I need her to stay. I need her to stay.” I could not control my panic; I was trembling. “She’s dying.”

  “She’s already dead.” He was soothing, reasoning. “Whatever soul was there is long gone.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not. She’s not. I feel her all the time. I dream about her. And you...she wants you—”

  “Wants me for what? I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I can’t decide without her. I need her.” I was crying now. He grabbed my hand, trying to draw me close.

  He looked afraid, I thought, but his voice was so calm. “She doesn’t look to be too badly damaged. Perhaps we can save her.”

  I shook my head. Useless. Nothing to do. She was disintegrating and I knew it would continue. I’d seen it in my dreams. I felt it to be true. She was leaving me, and I had not done what she wanted—I still did not know what she wanted.

  “We’ll put her back in the barn,” he insisted. “She was fine there. Perhaps it’s because she’s on the porch. The rain...”

  I looked at him in dismay. “It won’t help. It’s too late. She’ll keep crumbling and crumbling—” washed away by water, drawn down and down and down, withering and splitting, a seed pod borne away by the wind.

  My throat tightened, the dream was so strong that for a moment I couldn’t breathe.

  “You’ll find a way to stop it.”

  “There is no way. I’m a fool.” I touched her again, the saffron cloth, the dust of her discoloring it at the edges. I looked at him, “How could I have not seen—?” and stopped, because the look on his face surprised me. It was relief, as if a burden had been lifted from him, one that had troubled, and I frowned and said, “You’re happy about this.”

  His expression shuttered. He shook his head. “No.”

  I was on my feet in a single motion. “How can you be happy? This is all wrong, all of it. I don’t understand what she wants from me, and now I’ll never know.”

  “Leonie, you’re not making sense.” He rose, reaching for me, his hand sliding down my arm as I tried to jerk away, his fingers catching in the bracelet at my wrist, and the fragile, worn twine snapped—not even a sound, just a feather brush of feeling, and I looked down to see it fall as if it were tumbling through water, almost floating, the charms twisting, shining pink and green, blue and silver, until it hit the porch, where it held, just barely, and I made a sound of dismay, I tore from his grasp, falling to my knees to reach for it, but I was too late. It slipped through a crack between the boards and disappeared.

  “Let it go,” he whispered. “All your talismans...they mean nothing. Trust me, Lea. Let it go.” He pulled me to my feet, and I was stunned and uncertain, disbelieving, unresisting as he wrapped me in his arms. My wrist felt too bare without the bracelet, and the mummy was slipping from my grasp, all protections gone.

  And then I heard, “What a tender moment. Pardon me for intruding.”

  Junius.

  Daniel’s arms dropped from me; he stepped away so quickly I swayed without his support, and without thinking I reached out again, clutching his arm. I saw the way Junius noted it. His blue eyes were cold and stony. He was soaked. Beyond him, the rain poured relentlessly down.

  I said, “The mummy—”

  He raised a brow; my words died in my throat. Misery and regret and guilt and fear—they were all there. I could not pick one above the other.

  “The mummy’s decaying,” Daniel put in. “I was only trying to comfort her.”

  “How well you do it,” Junius said. “Why, it looks almost as if you’ve done it before.”

  I released my hold on Daniel’s arm and said as calmly as I could, “I was upset. He was onl
y trying to help. She got wet when the river rose and I...I didn’t see it until now. We were going to cut and...and...” I held out my hand uselessly, pointlessly, to show him the umber dust on my palms.

  Junius ignored that. He stepped up the stairs to the porch. He barely looked at her. He looked at Daniel, and there was a funny smile on his face, something that raised my dread and my misery. He said, “You haven’t told her the truth, have you?”

  Daniel went still. “What truth? I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Oh, I think you do.” Junius reached into his coat, taking a folded piece of paper from an inner pocket. His gaze came to me. “The reason I went to Bruceport,” he said, waving it in his hand. “I’ve been waiting for it.”

  Warily, I said, “What is it?”

  “A letter, of course.” He leaned back against the railing negligently. “From San Francisco. I still have friends there, you know, boy. Or perhaps you didn’t realize it. Actually, I think you must not have, else you might have covered your tracks better.”

  I didn’t like the cruel edge in his voice, nor did I like the way Daniel had gone so still—there was a trapped animal feel about it, and I was afraid. “What are you saying, Junius?”

  “He’s not a reporter for any newspaper,” Junius said brutally, though he didn’t look at me as he said it, but at his son. “He worked as a printer’s devil at the Call once, what—seven years ago or so? Do I have it right, boy? The editor there barely remembers him.”

  I was confused. I looked at Daniel, who very carefully wouldn’t meet my gaze.

  Junius went on, steady and cruel. “He works for a curiosity museum.”

  “A curiosity museum,” I heard myself repeating—as if from far away.

  “Everson’s Hall of Curiosities. He’s on a mission, as it were, or so the owner was kind enough to tell my friend. Everson made a deal with him—Daniel here would procure the mummy for a split of the profits. He’s here to steal her away from you, Leonie. It’s why he’s come. Not for me, not for any ‘story.’ He’s here for the mummy.”

  I felt stunned and sick, disbelieving.

  Junius went on, “I suspected it from the first. But what I don’t know is why he’s waited so long to take her. How hard is it to just paddle her away some night when everyone’s asleep? What were you waiting for, boy?”

  There was silence. Daniel looked at me, and what I saw in his eyes told me it was true. Guilt. And too, a plea for forgiveness. “She’s more valuable with a provenance.” He said quietly. “I needed the story of who she was.”

  “Ah. That explains it. And here I thought it was just that you were enchanted by my wife.”

  I sagged back upon the railing, feeling it shake a little with the suddenness of my weight.

  “Lea,” Daniel said, reaching for me. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t touch me.” My voice sounded distant; there was no force in it, but he jerked back again as if I’d hit him. Everything, every disparate little thing that hadn’t seemed right about him fell into place, all the things he’d said, all that talk about curiosity museums, everything that should have told me. He never worked on any newspaper story. He’d worked for circuses and sideshows. He had too much knowledge about the mummy, about what must be done. The day when I’d come upon him in the barn with her and the canoe readied instead of upended. His willingness to steal. You will regret it now he is here...I should have known. I’d been a fool. I said weakly, “Was any of it true?”

  “Lea’s always enjoyed a good story,” Junius said.

  Daniel glanced at him, then back to me, quickly, as if he were afraid I had suddenly disappeared. “All of it,” he whispered. “Everything I said except for...the reason I was here.”

  “There was no feather. No newspaper.”

  “That was true. Your Toolux—”

  “Don’t.” My throat was tight. I felt tears again.

  Daniel let out his breath. Woodenly, he said, “It was what happened. It seemed too good to be true. My long-lost father”—spoken bitterly—“and a mummy. Two birds with one stone. Vengeance and...and I needed money.”

  “For Eleanor.”

  “Yes,” he said impatiently before he took a step toward me and then stopped again, wary. “But Lea, I...I didn’t expect you.”

  The words held echo and force. I remembered the first time I’d heard them, the first time he’d said them.

  Junius said, “How touching.”

  Daniel snapped back, “Go to hell.”

  “Get off my land.”

  “It’s not your land, it’s hers,” Daniel said. “And I’ll go when she tells me to.”

  “She’s my wife,” Junius said.

  “Only if she wants to be. You weren’t free to marry her. Your marriage is a joke. She’s less tied to you than I am.”

  “Tell that to the sheriff.”

  “The sheriff?” Daniel let out a laugh. “Is there one? Go ahead. Bring him out. Do you really want the whole place to know the truth of what you did?”

  I stepped forward, forcing my voice through a throat that felt swollen. “That’s enough. Please. Enough.”

  “Tell him to go, Leonie,” Junius said.

  Daniel looked at me. “Don’t let him do this, Lea. Please. I love you.”

  “Quiet.” I held up my hand, uncertain, unsteady. “Please just be quiet. Both of you.”

  Miraculously, they were.

  I didn’t know what to do, or what to think. My thoughts chased themselves like moths, dodging, here and gone. The mummy and the pull of him, and her voice in my head saying I brought him for you. Bibi’s warnings and June’s and now she was decaying and everything dissolving, and I felt as if I stood on the verge of something I wasn’t certain I wanted, too afraid to go forward, unable to go back. I found myself rubbing my wrist, searching for the twine, the charms that were no longer there. No protection and only myself to trust.

  I said, “I don’t know what I want. Neither of you, perhaps.”

  Daniel exhaled sharply. Junius looked angry.

  I left them on the porch and walked into the heavy rain, toward the Querquelin, toward the place where I had found her, and I sat on the bank and watched the water churn and tumble and course—too much rain, the river was rising again. If it kept up, it would flood. But I didn’t move. I sat there in the rain until the night came on, and there was nothing more to see, and still I sat, so cold I could not feel my hands or my face, shivering and drenched, voices churning through my head, every one an attempt to define me: Science needs a more logical brain than a woman’s...Where did that story come from, Lea? Is there some savage here to tell it to you?...An intemperate woman who studies obscenities and dances like a whore...You’re not a scientist, you’re an artist.

  But her voice was no longer among them, and so I could not find myself.

  CHAPTER 27

  WHEN I FINALLY left the river, the night was so black and the rain so hard it felt I was moving through a void toward some distant, beckoning light, drawn almost without volition, made eerie by the music that floated on the air, organ music, something slow and quiet like a hymn, but I didn’t recognize it. When I went inside, Junius was still playing. Daniel was in the kitchen, leaning against the pie safe, a cup of coffee in his hands. Lord Tom was not there, and he was the one I wanted. The comfort of my adolescence, words that didn’t toss me to and fro.

  Daniel glanced up quickly when I came through the door, and Junius stopped playing abruptly, twisting on the bench to face me. “You look chilled to the bone,” he said sharply.

  “I need to go to Bruceport tomorrow,” I said, taking off my sodden coat. “I need to talk to Bibi.”

  “To Bibi? What for?”

  “I just do. I can’t explain.”

  “I’ll take you.”

  I shook my head. I looked at Daniel, who had stepped into the room, who stood silently by the settee, waiting. I said, “I’ll take Lord Tom.”

  Junius frowned. “Why? You
’re angry with me? What have I done but show you what a liar he is?”

  “Nothing,” I said quietly. “You’ve done nothing. But I’m taking Lord Tom.”

  Daniel said, “Don’t believe everything she tells you, Lea. Please just...just speak with me before you condemn me.”

  Junius laughed. “Yes, by all means. Give him the opportunity to lie to you further.”

  I said nothing. I went to the trunk beneath the stairs and took out blankets, bringing them back into the main room, and Junius said, “What are you doing?”

  “Making a bed.”

  “I’m not sleeping here, goddammit. You’re my wife. I won’t just hand you over to this...this—”

  “It’s not your decision, June,” I said quietly. “And it’s not you I’m making a bed for. It’s me.”

  He looked as if I’d struck him. “Lea. Sweetheart. I don’t understand. He’s the one who lied.”

  I sank onto the settee, the blankets still in my arms. I felt cold and tired, and I could no longer be anything but honest. “I’ve been having an affair with him, Junius. We’ve been...together. You know this already, or you at least suspect it. You can’t just pretend it hasn’t happened. I can’t.”

  I heard Daniel’s expulsion of breath behind me. I didn’t look at him, but kept my eyes on Junius. His expression turned bleak—he had known, of course. Every word he’d spoken since his return had said it. There was no surprise in his eyes, only a deep hurt that was a pain in my own heart. I could not keep his gaze; I looked down into the blankets.

  Junius said, “I forgive you. He seduced you. You were vulnerable—I should have taken more care.”

  I shook my head.

  He went on, almost desperately, “I won’t let you go. Twenty years, Lea. You can’t mean to throw that away. You can’t mean to leave me for him. He’s done nothing. He has nothing. He’s a liar and a thief.”

  “And you’ve taken advantage of her for years,” Daniel interjected. “You don’t appreciate her. You barely know her.”

  “Stop. Please, Daniel,” I said. “Please. It doesn’t help.”

  “You’re in love with me,” he said, almost as desperately as Junius had spoken. “You know you are.”