by Amy Lukavics
And it will never stop.
As soon as Pa returns, with or without Hannah, I must do what I can to convince Emily to help me talk to Ma and Pa about leaving the prairie. I will tell them everything, I will tell them about Henry, and the baby, and of the time he told me stories about some haunted fields that sounded a whole lot like the ones Zeke described, a whole lot like these fields. I’ll bet anything that it was Henry who told my pa about this area in the settlement that day, Henry who drew the map up and eagerly overestimated how many homes would be available just so that Pa would be more likely to leave. That mewling, beef-witted malt worm.
There is one other thing my grandfather always said, Zeke’s words repeat suddenly in my mind. He said that even though the prairie wasn’t safe, the forest always would be.
Dread blooms in my stomach as I imagine something else happening to one of the children or Emily. I must be especially cautious. I don’t entirely trust Zeke, but as much as I hate to admit it, we are likely going to need his help.
Midmorning passes in a wave of rolling white clouds and the whistle of winds in the grasses. Birds shriek at one another and play games in the air. The tips of jackrabbit ears can be seen bobbing up and down through the prairie. The forest stays still.
Pa and Hannah still aren’t back by midday.
Emily hasn’t spoken much since the attack, and neither have the children. What is taking Pa so long? He said he’d come back by morning, even if just alone. Ma has yet to emerge from the cabin, although a few minutes ago I heard her throw another log into the fire. Why does she have a fire going during the day? She must be beside herself over Hannah. I wonder if she even knows what hour it is.
“I’m hungry,” Charles pipes up after the sun has started to shift into afternoon. “Can we have some stew?”
“We can’t make stew, boil brain!” Joanna says and crosses her arms. “We don’t have a rabbit. Plus, we need to wait until Pa and Hannah return.”
“I’ll go and get some more jerky,” I offer, and stand to stretch my legs. I don’t want any of them going into the cabin alone to bother Ma—clearly what she needs right now is space to grieve over what happened. “I’ll bring dried apricots, too.”
“I don’t want any more jerky!” Charles whines, and that’s when Joanna turns and slaps him across the face, hard.
Charles’s brown eyes widen, and he shrieks in pain, then dissolves into a loud fit of tears so sad and pitiful it nearly takes us all down with it. Emily pulls him to her and tries to soothe him, strokes his hair and glares at Joanna with something so fierce my little sister nearly begins to cry herself.
“Come with me, Jo,” I say gently from the ground, and reach to help her jump down.
We walk hand in hand to the cabin. Joanna pulls at her dark curls and tries to conceal her quivering lip. I stop just before the door and kneel down to become eye level with her.
“I know this is scary, Joanna.” I tuck her hair behind her ears gently, like Ma does, and she looks at me expectantly with shining eyes. “But we cannot turn on each other, ever. We have to be able to take care of each other, all right? Charles is just worried about Pa.”
“I’m sorry, ’Manda.” Jo’s face crumbles, and she throws her arms around my neck. “Oh, why aren’t they back yet? Pa promised by morning.”
I don’t know how to answer her. I kiss her temple and her forehead and her hair, then take her hand and lead her into the cabin to get lunch. Ma is still in her chair. She hasn’t changed out of the nightgown she was wearing during the attack—it is wrinkled and dotted with dried bloodstains from Hannah. Her hair is wild, a startling difference to her usual carefully twisted bun. It lies in a tangled muss of black curls that stick out from all around her head.
“I love you, Ma,” Joanna says hopefully. “I love you so very much.”
Ma doesn’t respond, doesn’t turn around at all, and I hurry my little sister along to help me gather the food. By the time we return with stacks of dried meat and a pouch filled with soft golden apricots, Charles has stopped crying and is now sniffing against Emily’s arm.
“I’m so sorry, Charles.” Joanna climbs back into the wagon with my help and hugs him as tight as she can. “I love you, brother.”
“Well, did you get lunch?” he asks eagerly, and Jo can’t help but laugh.
We eat in more silence. When Emily is finished, she leans back and crosses her feet over the front of the wagon.
“Why don’t you and Charles go play?” she suggests to Joanna after the children are through eating, as well. “There’s no need for you two to worry yourselves sick, leave that to Amanda and me. We’ll let you know if we see them coming.”
Joanna nods and takes Charles’s hand, and I help the children down from the wagon so they can play tag around the front clearing. The sound of the game provides a welcoming end to the time-slowing silence.
“Do you think it’s a good sign that he is taking this long?” Emily asks without shifting her focus from the trees. “Or a bad sign?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I want to say that it’s a good sign, since they’d probably be back already if it was as simple as Hannah dying.”
“Do you think she’s going to die?” Emily asks. “Honestly.”
Telling the truth is difficult, mostly because it’s the first time I’m fully admitting it to myself.
“I just don’t see how she could survive after the condition she was in,” I say. “The doctor would have to have some sort of miracle medicine.”
While we continue to wait, I mull over the possibility of the forest once again in my mind. Committing to something so unknown doesn’t seem like the best idea, especially since nothing ever seems to happen on the prairie during the day and I have no idea how I’d even begin to talk Ma into going with us.
I decide that we should stay put until Pa comes back. If there is still no sign of him by the later afternoon, I will begin to consider going in after him myself while Emily stays to take care of the children.
Please, come back to us, Ma, I think, breathing deeply through my nose. I do not want to make this decision on my own.
If I did go, what would I say to Emily? That I don’t think we’re safe, that I didn’t just need rest, that it wasn’t me going mad but the land itself? How could I convince her after our talk yesterday?
Hannah! I told Emily during our conversation in the rain that Hannah was in danger. Surely she finds the circumstances of the ant attack strange, at least. I grow just a bit of hope.
Just the thought of Hannah, my sweet baby sister with the dark curls and beautiful gray eyes, is too much to bear. I see her wet, red mouth pull into a grin from being tickled, I see her little eyebrows furrow as she stares blankly forward while exploring a new item or landscape with her sea-star hands.
And now I see her face covered in ants, her mouth, her eyes, everything, and the agonizing pierce of her scream echoes in my head. I put my hand over my mouth to keep from crying out. The children whoop as they chase each other around the wagon.
I prayed for this, oh, my God, I prayed for her to die. I am so disgusted with myself I can hardly bear it. I must make it right somehow, or at least give everything I can to try.
Another hour passes without any sign of Pa. I tell Emily that I need to speak to her alone, that it’s urgent. Once the children have promised to leave Ma alone, she suggests we take a walk away from the cabin for privacy.
“Just as long as we stay away from the fields behind the cabin,” I say. Even in the middle of the day, the area chills me. I cannot wait to get my family away from here.
If they believe me, that is.
“I do not understand what is happening.” Emily breaks the silence of our walk right when we reach the homemade fire pit, halfway between the cabin and the woods. “Why would Pa wait so long to come back?”
I look past the grasses and into the thick trees, much larger and more tightly clustered than the ones in the mountains, and the wind is much louder near them, too.
“I have not the slightest idea,” I say, shifting my focus to my sister. “But what I’m wondering is why nobody has come. You’d think that as soon as Zeke saw what happened to Hannah, he’d come to talk to us, even if Pa couldn’t leave. The doctor’s cabin is only two miles away. He cared about you enough to come, Emily.”
I look again to the trees. “I wonder if Pa never found his way there.”
Emily is frowning and solemn, crouching before the fire pit and poking at it with a stick even though it isn’t lit. Her braids are frazzled, and little strands of her dark waves have fallen loose about her face. Still, even when my sister should look terrible, she is beautiful.
“Maybe...” Emily pauses to search wildly in her head for answers. “Maybe Pa took Rocky straight to town. Through the woods.”
“For what?” I ask.
“A gravestone.”
“I guess that could be true,” I say. “But why wouldn’t he come for Ma? Surely he understood that not showing up would worry her sick?”
I am getting to feel seriously uneasy about the position of the sun. It’s getting late already, and the idea of going alone into the forest to find Pa with dark quickly approaching doesn’t settle right in my stomach, no matter how safe Zeke’s grandfather swore the trees were. I need to hurry.
“And on top of that,” Emily says, “there is still the body to consider.”
“What about it?”
“Where is it?” Emily sighs in frustration. “It doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t Pa have at least brought Hannah back to begin the burial before she started to rot? Why would he bring her with him to town?”
In truth, the idea of Pa going to town through the forest in the first place, without coming back for any supplies first, is a stretch for me to believe anyway. I don’t want to say that, though. I need to be careful with how I speak to her.
“Emily,” I say, and she doesn’t turn from the fire pit. I must choose the right words, I must make my sister believe me. “Do you remember during our talk yesterday, when I told you that I felt as though Hannah was in danger?”
The wind picks up. The weather has finally started to cool into much more pleasant temperatures than when we first arrived. I wish I could enjoy it, the way we all enjoyed each other as a family over our feast last night. Was that really just last night?
“I do,” Emily finally answers. She stands. “I don’t know what to think about it. If you knew that this would happen—”
“I didn’t,” I burst out defensively, and my sister’s eyes widen. She almost looks afraid of me. “I mean, I was nervous that something bad might happen, but I didn’t know that she’d be...be...”
I can’t even continue. I wrap my arms around myself and sit on one of the half logs before the circle of stones. Most of the ashes from our story time with Zeke are still inside. Emily stays where she is.
“I need Pa to get back,” she says. “I don’t even know what I should do right now.”
“What we should do,” I say in correction. “Come on, Emmy, please. I need you right now. I need you to believe me.”
“That the prairie is evil?” Emily cries. She is not convinced; she is angry. “Sister, I can’t trust you, I haven’t been able to for as long as I can remember, I don’t even want to know how you knew something bad would happen to Hannah, or why, or what that says about you—”
“You cannot be serious!” I stand now, my heart pounding in my chest. “I thought we were to be dearest friends forever, Emily. How can you say these things to me right now, how can you find it within yourself to blame me for Hannah? I am still your sister!”
Her face softens at my emotion a little. Please, Emily, please.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and shakes her head back and forth quickly. “No, no, of course I cannot blame you for the ants. I’m just...scared, I think. And very confused. Oh, Amanda.” She sinks to sit on the log behind me, and I join her.
“I want to get our family out of here,” I say, barely above a whisper. “I want to go into the forest myself and find Pa, while you stay here with the children. And when I come back with him, we all need to leave for Elmwood as soon as possible.”
“Let Ma watch the children!” Emily argues. “I can go with you, I want to find Pa, too. Zeke told me how to find his cabin—”
“No,” I say firmly, and look over my shoulder to the prairie cabin. Charles and Joanna are tiny flecks against the sky, still running around the front clearing in their game. “I need you to protect the children, sister, and make sure that nothing happens to them. Ma isn’t herself, she hasn’t been ever since last night, and we can’t count on her to take care of them in her grief. I think that the only person able to console her right now is Pa.”
What I don’t mention is that I am also insistent on going alone because I want to protect Emily from myself as well, and also Zeke, on the chance that he’s somehow preventing Pa from returning. The Kensington story is still fresh in my mind, not to mention the fact that I seem to evoke death upon any children that are near. Two gone now, thanks to me. I won’t let it happen to the rest of them.
Emily grabs one of her braids and begins to chew the ends as she thinks, a habit that has always made my stomach turn. She considers my idea as her eyes dart around the line of trees that begin the forest.
“All right,” she says finally and stands from the log. “But if you don’t come back within a few hours, I will be coming in after you. I’m trusting you right now, sister. Last time you wanted to go on a walk in the woods by yourself—”
“I know,” I say, irritated. I fight the urge to put my hand over my belly. “You don’t need to remind me.”
She lets out a quick huff of breath. “I said I’d go along with your plan, didn’t I?”
“All right, then,” I say, and go to hug Emily. “Let us not fight at a time like this.” She returns the embrace, but something about her feels stiff, hesitant. It makes me want to cry.
When we get back to the cabin, Joanna and Charles are sitting together on the back of the wagon, their heads bent together as they whisper back and forth with faces far too serious for their age. They look relieved to see us.
“Ma kept asking where you were,” Joanna says in a quiet voice. “She kept asking about it, no matter how many times we answered her. She’s acting very queerly.”
“I think it’s best that we all leave Ma alone for now,” I say and look to the cabin. Smoke billows from the chimney. “She needs space to process whatever it is that happened.”
“Where are Hannah and Pa and Rocky?” Charles cries, and buries his face in his hands. “Why haven’t they come back yet?”
“I don’t know, Charles,” I say. “But I am going to find out.”
Emily and I leave the children to their whispering to go check on Ma. She’s sitting on the rocking chair, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She looks so dehydrated and exhausted, yet her demeanor is oddly pleasant. When she hears us enter the cabin, her head turns sharply in our direction. Her hair is still down, surrounding her face with kinks of curl.
“Emily,” she says and licks her lips. They are dry and cracked, from the heat of the fire maybe. “Amanda.”
“Hello, Ma.” I approach her slowly, with caution. “How are you feeling?”
“Oh, just fine!” she pulls her flaking lips apart into a smile. “I was just thinking about you. Where did you two go, just now?”
“We went to our fire pit, Ma,” Emily says. “Remember how we told you before we left?”
“You did nothing of the sort,” Ma hisses suddenly, causing both my sister and I to jump. “Tell me, my loves, did you go to the forest? Tell your s
weet Ma the truth.”
Emily and I glance at each other in alarm. Ma shrugs to adjust her filthy nightgown.
“The forest?” I say. Her behavior is terrifying to witness. She is not herself; this is not my ma. My heart will not slow down. “Of course we didn’t. It’s true, what Emily said. We only went to the fire pit.”
“Good.” Ma leans into the rocking chair, hands folded once more, and rocks back and forth while she stares into the flames. “You are never to go into those trees. Ever.”
“Why?” Emily asks gently, and kneels down beside the chair. “Do you know why Pa is taking so long to get back, Ma?”
Ma pauses, and for a moment I think that maybe she’s going to ignore my sister. Her eyes shine, dancing with the flames, unblinking, and the smallest hint of a grin flickers upon her face. She suddenly looks over at Emily.
“There’s a demon,” Ma whispers, her voice hoarse. She speaks as if someone else is listening, and I have to lean in closer to hear her words.
“A demon in the woods,” she whispers again. “We don’t want it slithering on its belly over here to us, now, do we?”
Emily and I stare openmouthed at this woman with the wild hair and rough voice. I’m dreaming, I think to myself. This is a nightmare. What has happened to my ma? Emily’s eyes are growing wet.
“Don’t worry, though.” Ma turns her gaze back to the fire, her eyes bloodshot from forgetting to blink. “We’re safe here, in this prairie. Your pa will be back before you know it.”
“What do you mean a d-demon?” I stutter.
Ma stops rocking then. “What was it, Amanda, that I just said? Not one minute ago? It was in the trees.”
“I’m...I’m sorry.” I stand and take a step back. “We’ll leave you alone, Ma.”
“Good little children,” she sighs and begins to rock again. Her hands curl over each other in her lap. “I need to go fetch some meat for lunch. Your pa wouldn’t want us to starve on his account, I’m quite sure.”
