by Sarah Chorn
I sit up, carefully.
I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, carefully.
I reach for my cane and heave myself to my feet. There is a chair near the window, and I make my way to it. My steps are halting and every one of them takes something out of me. This is now something I must fight for. Each step, each breath is a battle.
I almost fall into the plush chair, but the view is worth the effort.
The sky is an explosion of color. The marigold sun hovers like a teardrop on the horizon. Oranges, purples, and reds are being edged out by a lapis-kissed sky. It is that rare liminal time when it is neither night, nor day, and I cherish it. These quiet hours, when the world seems to hover on the edge of everything, are the ones I enjoy the most.
My heart is hammering in my chest, and though my vision begins to swim and exhaustion presses down on me, I watch every moment of the birth of this day. I savor the way the colors change and the world sharpens.
“Ianthe,” Cassandra says, appearing in the doorway. “Are you well?”
“I’m just watching the sunrise,” I reply with a smile. “It is beautiful, is it not?”
She pauses. “Yes,” she finally says, but she is not looking at the sunrise. She is looking at me.
“Come greet the day with me,” I say to her. She stands beside me and rests a hand on my shoulder. I feel her warm breath on the nape of my neck.
I don’t need to look at her to know she is crying.
Shortly after my fight with Jack, Annie became unwell. She spent most of her mornings too sick to get out of bed. Harriet and I spent many hours emptying basins of her sick in the meadow, only to have to do it all over again. I was full of fear. I had not ever seen anyone this ill, and survive. I also had vague memories of my mother in a condition very much like Annie’s, and she did not survive, so I was a knot of anxiety, always afraid that this glance at Annie would be my last.
It was Harriet that comforted me as I tore myself apart with worry. “Don’t fret so, Cassandra. It’s a normal part of life,” my cousin would say. “Come along. Let’s go help in the fields.” And we would spend the rest of the day with Jasper and Jack until I was too busy and tired to remember Annie’s condition. By the time we came back into the house, she would be better, and I would all but forget what had me so worried all those hours earlier.
This was the strange mercy of Harriet. She seemed to always know what those around her needed, and she’d puzzle out the best way to give it to them. For me, it was keeping my mind and body fixed on something else. For her mother, it was giving her time alone, without my worry filling up the cabin, and so she kept me busy and gave her mother peace.
After some time of this, on a sunny afternoon bitten through with the chill of winter, Annie called me to her. She looked well, her belly slightly rounded, her cheeks flushed with vitality. On the empty chair beside her sat beautiful black boots. “These are for you,” she said, smiling wide.
“For me?” I asked. Their leather was supple and shiny. They were tall, with thick soles and looked very fine indeed. I had never owned anything so beautiful. “Annie, they’re beautiful!” I clapped my hands and Annie laughed.
“Sit down. Let’s try them on.”
I sat in the chair that had just held the boots, and she patted her lap. “Lift your foot,” she said. It took some work to get them on, but they fit perfectly. I remembered the night that Jasper had measured my feet. It hadn’t made sense at the time, but now I realized it must have been for these boots. Such fine things, they hugged my feet and made my ankles feel stiff. It would take time to get used to them. “You’ve needed new boots for a while now, but it took some time to save up for them.” Annie lowered my left foot to the ground and lifted my right. A comfortable hush settled in the space between us while she got to work on the laces.
“Cassandra,” she finally said, pushing the shoe onto my foot, “we didn’t just get these boots because you needed them. We got them because you’re going to start school tomorrow, and you’ll need sturdy boots for the walk.”
School. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. On the one hand, I was excited to leave the house. Excited to see other kids my age, and eager to explore. On the other hand, my experiences in town had not been comfortable. My first trip into Grove ended with me overwhelmed, and sick with panic. The few other times I’d gone since hadn’t been much better. I was not a person who was wanted. I was different, and the pall of my outlaw father clung to me. I could not imagine school being any different, and yet in my heart of hearts, I hoped that perhaps children were more understanding than adults. Perhaps my peers would see a girl and not much to whisper about, at that. Perhaps I could make more friends. It was an intoxicating idea, and I cleaved to it.
“Why must I go to school?” I asked.
“To learn,” Annie answered simply. “You’ve spent too much time without.”
“Without what?” I asked, turning my feet this way and that. I was transfixed by how the light made them shine. I felt like I was wearing the sun itself.
“Without,” Annie repeated, nodding. “You have never had. You are a wild creature. Your father has given us the task of mastering you, showing you the ways of civilization so that someday you might be a woman who… acquires.”
Her words struck me deep, and a great sorrow filled me up. There could not have been a clearer divide between us. Blood tells the only truth it knows, as my da frequently said, and mine marked me as inferior. I knew, even then, that I would always be one who spent my life wanting, arms full of secrets while I jumped at every shadow.
“I do not wish to be tamed,” I told her. I was young then, still naive enough to think that my wildness could be broken out of me.
Annie met my eyes. “A mountain lion may be beautiful, Cassandra, but do not forget its nature. There is a reason we do not allow such creatures in our house.” She tugged on my laces and then let me slip my foot to the floor. “Your da wanted you to learn. He wanted you to be better than he is, and it’s beyond time that you met other children your age. You need to learn how to play. You are such a serious waif. Sometimes I worry that you lost your childhood somewhere on the side of the mountain.”
“Yes, Annie,” I said. There was no arguing this. The decision had already been made. Tomorrow, I would go to school. I might even enjoy it as much as I hoped I would.
“There are some things you will need to be careful about.” Annie’s voice was slow and steady, but her eyes held mine, and I knew that this was important. So I nodded and folded my hands in my lap, settling in to mark her words upon my bones. “Remember the story we told you. Your mother and her people are from the Teeth. People will guess what you are, but you must never confirm it, or give the company a reason to go sniffing around. And you must not touch any shine, Cassandra. Not ever. Make any excuse you can. If you get in trouble, take the punishment. Do not make a fuss. No one must ever know these special, secret things about you or it will put us all in danger.”
“I understand.”
Annie let out a sigh. “It is too much weight for one child to carry.”
I spent that night awake, thinking about the next day, aflutter with nervous anticipation. Sometime late at night, when the cabin was quiet and still, Harriet snuck into my pallet, pulling the blankets over our faces, we whispered the darkness away. I will never forget that kindness, the hours she spent easing my nerves. She told me about school, about Miss Mary, who, according to her, was the kindest, most wonderful woman in the world. And she told me of the things I would learn, and how these lessons would help me and give me opportunities I wouldn’t otherwise have. By the time morning came, I was excited, up before the rest of the house, dressed, and waiting impatiently to leave.
So it was that Annie sent us out the door with our lunch pails and books, bundled against the cold. I was rosy-cheeked and laughing as Harriet and I skipped down the lane to get Ianthe. Jack walked behind us, kicking pebbles with his boots and grumbling each time Harriet nagged at him about h
is slow pace. Things were still not comfortable between us, but they were getting easier. He even smiled at me once, a fleeting thing, when we met the road into town, where Ianthe met us.
Ianthe was less energetic but just as excited as I was. Her mother watched from the road, a worried expression pinching her brows. Ianthe quickly joined in our skipping game, playing away the morning. By the time we got to the small bridge over the now-frozen creek, even Jack was laughing with us.
We were in town before we saw other kids filling the streets. Perhaps twenty in total, all of them gem-toned and rainbow-hued. I was the only onyx head in a riot of colors. Of course, rumor of me had spread. I was expected, but I did not see any of the kind glances or smiling faces I’d imagined. Instead, they started whispering as soon as they saw me, and I knew, even before I reached the schoolhouse, that these children would be no different than the adults had been those few times I come into town. Eager to stare, and just as eager to stay as far away from me as possible.
Ianthe wove her fingers through mine and squeezed. It was her companionship that got me through that first day and all the days that followed. When I was with her, the regard of the other students didn’t seem as sharp or cutting.
I wish I could tell you that school came easily to me, that I liked it. It did not, and by and large, I did not. I quickly learned that I could not read, no matter how hard I tried. Letters and numbers swam around on the page, rearranging until nothing I saw made sense and I would drive myself nearly to tears trying to puzzle them out. I was so wary of shine, I was afraid to touch anything. And aside from Ianthe and my cousins, no one wanted to be near me.
“It is time for us to start our lessons on shine,” Miss Mary, a woman with a bottomless barrel of patience from which to draw, said a few weeks after I had started school. Anticipation fluttered in me. I was eager to know more about this substance, though I was still wary of it. She scanned the room before settling on me and Ianthe, her lips pursing. “Cassandra and Ianthe, why don’t you take your books to the cloakroom and study a spell?”
We did not argue, though I could see the dejected slope of Ianthe’s shoulders. We gathered our books and silently made our way to the cloakroom. Perching on one of the large wooden benches within, our books open, we watched the lesson instead of reading, peering at the rest of the students while they learned more about shine.
I was enraptured by the stuff. We had one shine rock at home, and we got our monthly allotment of shine oil, but due to my nature, it was hardly ever used. Now, I watched, transfixed, while Miss Mary informed the class about how shine oil is used to preserve food or ripen it back to its full health. “It takes time to order food and get it through the Boundary,” she said. “We grow most of what we eat here, but there are still things that must come from outside, and usually, by the time they get to us, these foodstuffs are rotten. One dab of shine will bring a withered apple to full health, and look at what it does to this orange.” She dipped her finger in the oil and touched it to an orange that was covered in green fuzz and looked shrunken and hard. I watched while the touch of shine seemed to bring it back to life, the mold sloughing off, the skin going vibrant and full. I swore I could almost smell it from across the room.
I didn’t know shine was used to preserve food. There had been a few times at Annie’s house when I had bitten into something and it tasted rancid, while the rest of the family seemed to eat it with abandon, and even love it. I had not understood why my food tasted rotten while theirs was fine, and now I did. Shine did not work on me. Of course, shine used to preserve food wouldn’t either.
“Our horse got through the Boundary,” I whispered to Ianthe one afternoon while we were sitting in the cloakroom under the guise of studying sums. It was the first time I had mentioned the journey to anyone, that fateful trip when my father had left me at Annie’s house.
Ianthe studied me, head cocked to the side. “The Boundary only works on people, silly,” she said with a smile. She pressed a finger against her lips and winked at me. “I will keep your secret.”
“I am sick of this cloakroom,” I said.
“She knows your nature,” Ianthe whispered. “That’s why you’re here, not out there.”
“Then why are you out here?” I asked. “You do not have that problem.”
“To keep you company,” Ianthe smiled, taking the bite out of the words. “I don’t mind, Cassandra. I’d rather be with you out here than alone in there. I know, all too well, what shine does.” I did not press her about what she meant by that. I wish I had.
I do not know how Miss Mary knew about my nature, but I am certain she did, I will always be thankful for her secrecy. There are good people in this world, silent and stalwart, practicing quiet acts of bravery each and every day.
Miss Mary could have given me up. She could have handed me that shine in front of the class and let them all see my secret nature. She could have, but she didn’t. Instead, each time a shine lesson was planned, she would find some reason for me to leave the room, whether to work on sums or to practice reading. Sometimes she would send me off alone, but most often, she’d send me off with Ianthe. It was so gracefully and naturally done, I doubt anyone noticed the timing.
One day, a few weeks in, the weather was just warm enough for us to enjoy lunch outside, albeit wrapped to protect from the cold. The sky was a vivid blue, and the sun was shining as bright as my enthusiasm. Miss Mary had kept me late to study sums I’d had confusion with. Finally, she bid me to get my pail and join my classmates outside for lunch.
“You’re dirty!” A boy shouted the instant the door to the schoolhouse shut behind me. Stunned silence followed his cruel taunts, a few boys off some distance snickered. “You’re the daughter of a coward, a criminal. Mixed-blood. Dirty. My pa says it would be better if you disappeared!”
“Jeremy, stop,” someone said. It might have been Jack, but my head was spinning, and that darkened vision I got that first time I went to town had returned. My body was covered in sweat and I felt myself trembling. Panic is a heady thing. It filled me up until I was certain I was drowning in it.
Those words stuck to me. Those horrible, hateful words, uttered so proudly, and with an audience not of adults this time, but students, all of them roughly my age. Somehow, that made it worse.
“You know what we do to curs to run them off?” The boy, Jeremy, was twelve, quite a few years older than I, blue-toned, with regal features. He was beautiful the same way the stars were beautiful. Nice to look at, but it wasn’t the kind of beauty I could do anything with.
“Jeremy, don’t.” Harriet this time. I would recognize her voice anywhere. “She doesn’t deserve this.”
“Do you know what we do to curs?” Jeremy pressed. He was closer now. I smelled cheese on his breath. Most everyone I saw had stopped what they were doing to watch what was happening. “Look at me!” He shouted.
Terrified. I felt like a rabbit in a trap. Frozen in place, with nothing but danger surrounding me and my muscles refusing to move, to budge, to so much as flex. I looked up, met his eyes, and saw malice, pure and unfettered. “Please,” I whispered, pleading with him. All I had to give was that one word.
“Sometimes a cur comes to our farm, and me and my pa have to run it off. You know how we do it? We throw rocks at it,” he said.
Snickers. A few people moaned. Harriet moved to the schoolhouse, had her hand on the doorknob when the first rock hit me. There were four boys in front of me. Four boys, and a schoolhouse worth of children watching this happen. Watching, while the boys threw pebbles they’d collected while I was inside with Miss Mary. Watching, while I was hit, over and over again. Despite my dress and my layers, I felt each one bite, each one bruise.
Finally, it stirred me to action. I did not think, I just picked a direction and ran. The boys broke into laughter, a few barking at me as I dodged this way and that, the rocks still hitting as they followed me down the hill.
I was almost lost within the trees, almost onto
the dirt track that would lead into Grove when the largest stone hit. I felt it smash into the side of my head. My ears began to ring, high pitched, drowning out the world. My vision went blurry. I felt the side of my head with the tips of my fingers, touched something warm. Blood, I realized, studying the crimson staining my skin. I was shaking. I had never been hit before, and certainly not with such hatred fueling the blow. Hate has a temperature. It is hot. Hotter than the sun, and just as blinding.
For a moment, everything went silent and still. I did not cry. My head was throbbing. I felt blood run like tears down my cheek. My stomach roiled, and I threw up.
“Good!” A boy shouted from somewhere. He sounded so far away. “Get out of here! You aren’t welcome here!”
“Stop it!” I heard Ianthe shout. Not Harriet. Not Jack, but Ianthe. She has always been a tiger. Later, I learned that she threw herself at Jeremy, and took him to the ground, raining blows upon him until Miss Mary pulled her off of him. I did not see any of it, though I wish I had. What a scene that must have been.
Instead, I fell to my knees in a puddle of my own sick.
Darkness kissed me and held me close.
“Hey!” Arlen shouted as Elroy was led off into the sunset. The engineer and conductors were standing, frozen in place, hands in the air watching Chris, the infamous Shine Bandit, lead Arlen off the first-class car of the train. Two rough-looking men held pistols aimed at their faces. Terror filled the air. “You can’t just let him leave with Elroy! He’s—”
“Fine. He’s fine,” Christopher Hobson said. The hand on his shoulder was firm, fingers gripping tight. “He’s being taken to the nearest town for a healer to see to. He’s been shot, Arlen. He won’t survive out here, and he’ll wake up shine-drunk. He’ll need someone to work him through the withdrawal and heal the wound. You think we can manage all that in the wild?”
“Where are we going?” Panic made the air in Arlen’s lungs heavy and cold. He’d been afraid in the car, but now, under that wide-open sky and all that rolling countryside, it all felt too real. He was too small, and the world was too large. And there was Elroy, his protector, riding away. There was nothing but him and the outlaw in the middle of all that untamed land. No one would help him. No one would even know he’d disappeared until it was too late.
