The Rosemary Spell

by Virginia Zimmerman

  I force myself to Adam’s side.

  He grabs the edge of the boat. “Here.” He puts a life vest over my head.

  My hands shake as I struggle to tie the long nylon strap around my waist.

  Adam reaches over and finishes the knot for me.

  “Why aren’t you shaking?” I mutter.

  He doesn’t answer. He reaches for a handle on the side of the boat. A series of memories hurries through my mind, like flipping pages in a book. Adam pulling the boat toward Shelby. Shelby holding the boat steady while I climb in. Me holding the boat, Shelby reaching over me, helping me. “I’ve got it,” she says, smiling.

  A snap. The boat lurches away again.

  Adam stares at the broken handle in his hand. It’s dirty off-white plastic, with screws jagging from its back where the boat should be. “It broke off,” he says.

  “I see that.” I swallow hard.

  Adam drops the useless piece of plastic into the frigid water. I expect it to bob there in the strange currents of this flooded part of the river, the part that isn’t supposed to be here, but it sinks, and it’s gone.

  Adam lurches to the boat. His hands are shaking now. From cold? From fear?

  I tell my legs to move. One step. Another. My brain struggles with the weird sensation of being in the river and feeling the street under my feet.

  I stand with Adam, the boat rope tight against our thighs.

  “We have to pull it in,” he says. “Together. The river’s stronger than me.”

  We alternate hands on the rope, like we’re setting up for tug of war, and we pull. I use my legs and my back and all the strength I can find in my arms. The boat reluctantly inches toward us.

  Together, we grasp the side. It tips, and the oars tumble against the wooden slats, making a horrible clatter.

  “Pull!” Adam grunts.

  We yank the boat toward us, out of the racing current. As soon as there’s enough slack in the rope, I struggle to unloop it from the post. My hands are numb now too, and my fingers are thick and clumsy. It takes me four tries to untie the boat.

  I watch my hands, like they are something apart from me. The ink has washed away, leaving only a faint tinge of blue and no words. Anything in my pocket will be soaked and ruined. The words are all washing away, but I keep Shelby in my head. I say her name over and over as I fight with the rope, turning it into two syllables that are like breathing. Shel-by. Shel-by. Shel-by.

  “Shel-by,” I whisper. “Shel-by.”

  Adam recites, “Rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray, love—”

  “I remember,” I cut in. Shelby is usually the one who does the rope when we take the boat to the island. My hands fighting with the current and the rope and the cold wetness are like her hands. She’s not gone. She’s in my head. In my memory. Until tonight when no moon will rise. Absent souvenir. All is lost.

  The rope comes loose, and I twine it quickly around my wrist. The boat wants to dart away, and the rope burns my skin as it resists.

  Adam’s face is red from working so hard to hold the boat. “Get in,” he growls through clenched teeth.

  I hoist myself into the boat. A million pins and needles stab into me as my legs leave the water. I turn away from the pain. Grab an oar and do my best to work against the current. I trust to instinct and to the strength that comes out of nowhere in a crisis to brace the flat of the oar against the racing water and hold the boat steady.

  Adam clambers into the boat, and for just a heartbeat, I hold us still, but I’m not strong enough. We lurch downstream.

  The boat crashes into a tree stump on what’s normally the bank, and waits there for a second. Then we shoot out into the main part of the river.

  Adam and I battle the water with our oars. My arm muscles are working at full strength but accomplishing nothing. I’ve always felt so in control when we row over to the island. We’re independent and knowledgeable about the river and the boat and ourselves. But now . . . All that slips away, racing downstream with the branches and hunks of plastic.

  Something huge hurtles our way.

  “What is that?” I shout.

  “Car door,” Adam answers, his eyes wide.

  Bright, angry red and dull gray, the door speeds toward us. We fight against the current, but it holds us fast. I numbly pull in my oars. Adam follows my lead. We curl into each other, waiting for impact and then for the icy water. I try to think of a plan, but my mind is stalled. I wrap my arms around Adam’s forearm, looped around my waist, over the bottom of my life vest, and I hope, hope, hope that the vest will do its job. That it will preserve me. That I will stay afloat. And not hit my head or get pulled under or . . .

  The heavy piece of metal and plastic slams into the back of the boat, and everything stops. We’re not moving. The door and the boat crash together and somehow make stillness. Then we pitch, not forward, but sideways. We’re closer to the island. And out of the current.

  The door dances past, like a leaf in the raging water.

  “Quick!” Adam grasps his oars.

  I snatch mine. Even as the boat careens downstream, we’re able to propel ourselves across. We move steadily at an angle. Down and over. More down than over, and I worry we’ll overshoot the island. If that happens . . . I don’t know the southern part of the river well. There isn’t another island for a long ways. If we don’t make it to our island, we’ll just have to ride the current. If we can.

  I’ve never worked so hard in my life. My arms are on fire, and I’m sure I’ve torn a muscle, but we keep plunging in the oars and shoving through the water.

  We’re close now. If the river weren’t so crazy, we could swim for it from here. We’re almost there, but we’re still moving down way faster than we’re moving over. In a few minutes we’ll be past the island. It will be too late.

  “Throw the rope!” I shout.

  A huge branch knocks into us, and I pitch forward. My face slams into the side of the boat. Tears burst into my eyes.

  “You okay?”

  I wipe blood from my nose.

  Adam stands in the boat. I work the oars. He makes a lasso and looks for a target. The boat rocks and bobs, but Adam is still. He raises his arm, lets out his breath, and tosses the rope. It sails over the churning river and catches on the broken branch of a fallen tree, sticking up like a thumb just at the edge of the island.

  The boat lurches as the loop catches, and Adam falls to his knees, but the rope holds.

  Seventeen

  ADAM CINCHES UP his life vest and jumps into the water. It comes just above his knees, and he wades quickly to the shore.

  My face is throbbing, and a rivulet of blood runs down my vest. I have to get out of the boat. I follow Adam. The cold water burns again. My lungs tighten. I stumble against something under the water and fall.

  I thrust my arms forward to catch myself.

  Pain.

  Pain like nothing I’ve felt before. Ever.

  Shooting up and down my arm.

  It won’t move.

  I can’t move it.

  My life vest holds my head out of the water, but I’m too dizzy to stand up.

  I am nothing but pain.

  “Rosie?”

  I try to take a deep breath, but even that small movement stabs my arm. I gulp a mouthful of silty water. Spit. Close my eyes against the flashes that must be what people mean when they talk about seeing stars.

  I just hang in the river, suspended by the orange vest, my left hand clinging to the rope, my right arm dangling useless. The pain spikes out from my elbow. The cold water is numbing, but every time the river pulls at my arm, a wave of nausea engulfs me.

  “I’m coming.” Adam pulls himself along the rope, back toward me.

  I wonder dimly how he could possibly help.

  He grabs hold of my vest and pulls me onto my feet. He reaches for my arm and then looks away. Swallows hard.

  “I think . . . I’m pretty sure you dislocated your elbow,” he says, not lo
oking.

  “Okay,” I agree. Yes, that sounds right. Except dislocated is too dull a word for how this feels. Swearwords that I’ve never spoken, that I didn’t even know I knew, rise up inside me, but I keep my mouth shut. If I open my mouth, I’ll throw up.

  And then I do anyway. The vomit hurries away with the current. Just more debris racing downstream.

  Adam puts an arm around my waist and guides me through the shallow water to the bank. “You have to step up here.” He half lifts me onto a log.

  I’m on dry land. Shaking. Shuddering. And with every tremor my arm throbs.

  Adam undoes his life vest and lifts up the tail of his shirt. He blots at my face. Gently touches the bridge of my nose.

  “It doesn’t look broken,” he says. “Just bloody.”

  “Okay,” I say. I would cut off my nose if it would stop the pain in my arm.

  “Your arm . . .” Adam is at a loss. “Can you . . . ? We have to get to the Rosie patch. Rosemary? Do you hear me? We’ll go to the patch and do the poem and get Shelby back, and then we’ll get you to a hospital. Okay? Rosie?”

  I fight through the crowding cobwebs in my head. Adam looks scared. He said we would get Shelby back. Who’s Shelby?

  “Shelby?” I ask, but my teeth are chattering, so it comes out a quavering She-el-by?

  Adam grasps my shoulders.

  Pain. I sway.

  He holds me steady and recites firmly, “Rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray, love, remember.”

  Shelby sits across from me, leaning against a tree branch, high up. Her hair blows slightly in the breeze. She reads aloud from Pelagia’s Boats. My favorite book. A book Shelby gave me. About hope and starting over.

  I remember.

  Adam fumbles at his waist. Undoes his belt.

  I use all my energy to stay on my feet and to not throw up again.

  He wraps the belt across my shoulder and down. “Rosie, I’m going to lift your arm into this. Like a sling, okay?”

  “Will it feel better?” I so want it to feel better.

  “I think . . . I think it will help it not feel worse,” he says.

  I take a deep breath and . . .

  The scream rips from me like pain in the shape of sound.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Adam settles my wrist against his belt.

  Waves of pain and sickness break over me. And again. And again.

  And then I’m okay, or not okay, but better.

  I meet Adam’s worried gaze and whimper, “Let’s go.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

  “Let’s go,” I repeat. “While I can.”

  We walk along the path through underbrush and over small puddles of snow that lie in the shade of trees. I have to focus on breathing and stepping and holding Shelby in my memory so I know why I’m not just curling up and waiting for rescue.

  I am the rescue.

  We are.

  Step. Breathe. Step. Breathe.

  The rosemary patch is in front of us. We climb the small hill. Adam pushes through the thick bushes and holds some branches back so I can pass.

  The scent surrounds us. Piney and sharp. And thoughts of Shelby fill me. She hands me her copy of a book. She smiles and says, “You’ll take good care of it.” She twirls to that fast Russian dance song from The Nutcracker. I ask, “Can you show me how to do that?” And she does. She tells me that she likes a boy, and she has a big, silly, embarrassed grin on her face, and then I do, too, when she tells me I’m the only one who knows.

  Adam brushes against my bad arm. An ache stabs all through me. I make a sharp animal sound.

  “Sorry!” He puts a hand on my other arm, gentle and warm.

  We stand in the little clearing where we sat with Shelby when we read the void poem. The Barbie lies there, pressed into the earth. A small leaf has fallen on her lap, and she looks like a messed-up Eve from the Garden of Eden. I want to point this out to Adam—Adam and Eve—but the signal from my brain can’t get past my elbow, and I can’t point.

  We’re where we need to be. We have the herbs. It’s not yet the new moon. All we have to do is say the poem. I think. I hope.

  “Let’s do the poem.” The words come out funny because I’m biting my cheek.

  Adam pulls the rue, now soaked, from his pocket. He breaks off a fresh branch of rosemary from the plant behind me.

  I close my left hand over his and over the herbs. “Ready?” I ask.

  For you there’s rosemary and rue; these keep

  Seeming and savour all the winter long:

  Grace and remembrance be to you both,

  And welcome to our shearing!

  Adam and I stand in the clearing, soaking wet. Pain clouds around my elbow and all down and up my arm and into my head. The Barbie lies on her side with her frozen smile.

  Adam’s face crumples. “It didn’t work.”

  I cling to Shelby with my mind. “Turn your body but keep your head still as long as you can. One. Two. Three,” she says as I twirl. “Good!” I’m getting it now. “Again,” she says. “One. Two . . .”

  “Three!” I cry out loud.

  Adam holds his face in his hands.

  “Three,” I say again. “Three times. There was all that thrice stuff in the void poem. You know, like third time’s the charm. Maybe it really is. A charm.”

  Adam looks up. His nose is red. Tears trail down both cheeks. “A charm?”

  “Maybe we have to say the poem three times.” With my good arm, I reach out for his hand again.

  “Okay.” His voice is small.

  We try again. I don’t listen to our voices chanting Shakespeare’s words. I let the pine smell of the rosemary and a sort of rotten coconut smell that must be the rue fill my mouth. I let the savour of the plants sink like steam into my lungs, and I release it with the words into the rosemary patch, the Rosie patch.

  And a third time.

  For you there’s rosemary and rue; these keep

  Seeming and savour all the winter long:

  Grace and remembrance be to you both,

  And welcome to our shearing!

  The roar of the river racing all around the island is the sound of the pain coursing through my body. A crow caws not far away. Somewhere, maybe in town, a siren, a high-pitched wail. Are they coming for us? I don’t think I can make it back otherwise.

  I stagger into the darkness rising around me.

  And a hand steadies me. Grasps my good arm. Holds me firm and close.

  It’s Shelby.

  Eighteen

  SHELBY FROWNS at our life vests. She pushes her hair behind her ear. “What . . . ?”

  But she can’t ask her question because Adam collapses against her. He’s sobbing. And I am, too. Relief vibrates in my skin, weaving over and under the pain.

  “You guys are really freaking me out! What the heck is going on?” She stares at Adam, then at me. “Why are you all wet? Where’d the life vests come from? When did it get so cold?” She wraps her arms around Adam’s quaking back and holds him. “What’s the matter?”

  “You—” Adam gasps. “Gone.”

  “What do you mean? I’m right here.”

  “Yes!” I cry. “But you weren’t before. You’ve been gone for six days.”

  “What are you talking about? We came over because it’s such a nice day, or it was.” She frowns. She takes in my belt-sling. “What . . . ?”

  “No time has passed for her.” I get it right away. I get it because of A Wrinkle in Time, where they explain that maybe time can wrinkle. The book has a picture of a string, and someone folds the string, and an ant walks right across the fold. He goes from one end of the string to the other without walking on the middle because it hangs down in a loop, or a wrinkle. “There’s an ant on a string,” I explain.

  Adam looks at me like I’m crazy, and I am. Crazy with pain, but now we have time because we have Shelby and everything will be okay. I speak slowly. “You know, our lives move on a straig
ht line, but for Shelby, the line wrinkled, and she passed over all the days we spent forgetting her and remembering her. For Shelby, the void poem wrinkled time, and I guess if we hadn’t gotten here before the new moon with the antidote poem and the rosemary and the rue, her line—her whole self—would have disappeared. Into void and nothing.”

  But that didn’t happen. We got here in time. We found the poem. Everything is okay. Except my elbow, which, like Shelby, is out of joint. But it can be put back, too, and we won’t need any magic words.

  “What are you talking about?” Shelby demands.

  Adam hurries through a rough explanation of what happened while we walk back to the boat. I don’t help. I focus on my arm and on walking and breathing.

  She says, “Shakespeare wrote magic spells?” She doesn’t believe him. Why would she?

  He starts pointing out changes as evidence that time has passed. It’s cold. It’s wet. There’s snow on the ground. We’re soaked. And wearing different clothes. And wearing life vests. And my elbow. “Rosie’s elbow’s dislocated!”

  “Dislocated,” Shelby echoes as we reach the bank.

  The boat tugs against its rope. The river still rages.

  Shelby’s eyes widen as she watches a lawn chair race past, tumbling in the water.

  “This is your proof,” she says. Her voice goes higher. “I would never have come here with the river like this. I would never have let you come.”

  “We made it over,” Adam assures her with a confidence I’m certain he doesn’t feel. “We’ll make it back. Plus, now we have you to help.”

  Her face is pinched with worry. “But maybe we should wait. The river will settle down. Or someone will come for us.”

  “She’s right,” I say. “If we sit here, on the bank, maybe someone in Cookfield will spot us.”

  “Those life vests would be hard to miss,” Shelby agrees. She pulls her phone from her pocket. “No reception,” she murmurs.

  Adam drops onto a log. It’s soaked, but so is he.