The Killing Jar (15 page)

“What kind of anima did I take yesterday?” I asked, thinking of the tranquility that had washed over me, so heavy that it had carried me straight into sleep. “It was lamb, wasn't it?” I guessed before she could answer, remembering the shape of the jar.

Rebekah nodded. “We craft the jars accordingly.”

“But how?” I asked. “How do you get anima into the jars, and why are they able to contain it? It seems like the anima would just … leak out.”

She waved one long-fingered hand in a dismissive gesture. “It's not something I can explain. You have to experience the process for yourself in order to learn. I was taught by a
bruja
in Mexico how to make the jars.” She smiled. “Perhaps someday I will teach you, too.”

She sat up and crossed her arms on top of her knees. “As to how we transfer anima from one vessel to another, I believe you already know something about that.”

I looked down at my hands, picturing those strange, white threads that emerged from them when I took anima. “I guess so.”

“You have nothing to be ashamed of, Kenna. What we are is something to be celebrated, not repressed or despised. Never be ashamed of who you are, sweet girl. You are Kalyptra. It doesn't matter that you were raised apart from us. We are what we are, regardless.”

“Does that mean you still consider my mom Kalyptra?” I asked her.

Rebekah's eyes shifted past me, as though my mom had just entered the room and interrupted us. “No,” she said finally. “She gave up her gift. She's lost to us.”

My heart tripped over a few beats. “You can give up being Kalyptra? How?”

My grandmother turned her gaze back to mine, her eyes slightly narrowed, her mouth a flat, humorless line. For an instant she appeared decades older. Or perhaps it was just that her sudden bitterness wiped away her beauty.

“Why would you ask such a thing? Did I not just tell you that being Kalyptra is a glorious privilege?”

“I'm sorry.” I immediately regretted my question. “I was just curious. I mean, I'm way more curious about how we became, you know, the way we are to begin with.”

Rebekah schooled the venomous expression from her face, and once again she was the stunning woman I'd first laid eyes on yesterday.

“Of course you are, dear. Of course you are. There's so much you don't know about us. But we can't cover it all in one day. I wouldn't want to overwhelm you after the hell you've been through. What happened to your mother and sister … how horrible that must have been.”

Tears seared the backs of my eyes, and I felt a hot pressure in my head like I was going to sneeze. My throat clamped down around my rising anguish, but it was no use.

I had lost my entire family. I had lost them because of something horrible I did.

I had brought them back, but that didn't change the reality of how they had died.

I broke then. Broke wide open, and all the tears I'd held back, all the sobs I had bottled, came bursting out.

“My poor, sweet girl,” Rebekah said, and she came to me and wrapped me in her arms and held me for as long as I needed her to. At some point her hair loosened and fell from its bun on top of her head, and I felt a nostalgic rush of warmth for this woman I barely knew as her long, blond hair draped over my arms like a blanket of silk threads. It made me feel like a child again, the child I had been when my mom's hair was long like Rebekah's and I had hidden myself in it like I was hiding behind drapes while she sang me to sleep.

Sweet girl, don't cry
.

I was a child again, and I wanted to be taken care of.

I wanted Rebekah to take care of me.

 

L
ISTEN
C
AREFULLY

I had anticipated I would get to spend the day with my grandmother, that maybe she would take me on a walking tour of Eclipse, during which we could cull another wildflower or two, or, even better, that we might sample from some of the jars in her cupboard. But when I had finished crying and pulled myself together, she rose from the pillows and held out her hand to help me up.

“Now, sweet girl, I have work to do, and I imagine you'd like to get yourself cleaned up. Cyrus can show you to the bathhouse and bring you whatever you need.”

“Oh. Okay,” I said, failing to hide my disappointment.

Rebekah touched my cheek, and as I had last night when she touched me, I felt a pleasant charge on my skin, like a little bit of her anima had transferred to me. I didn't know if that was possible, but that was what it felt like. She leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. “We'll have plenty of time together. Don't worry about that.”

I nodded and tried to smile as Rebekah led me to the door and guided me out. “I'll see you at dinner,” she said, and started to close the door, then paused with a look that said she'd just remembered something. “Kenna, one thing … you met Joanna?”

I nodded, but didn't elaborate on what Joanna had told my mom, that we should leave and not come back.

“I would ask that you steer clear of her for now,” Rebekah said. “Joanna and your mom have a complicated history, and I worry that she might take some old grievances out on you.”

“I'll do my best,” I told Rebekah. I didn't mention that I wondered if Rebekah might do the same thing.

“Promise me that you will.”

“What?”

She stared at me with unblinking, expectant eyes. “Promise me that you will not talk to Joanna, even if she seems friendly.”

“I—I promise,” I said faintly.

“Good girl,” she said before closing her door, making me feel a bit like a puppy that had just been left at home alone for the first time.

As I descended the stairs, I wondered what it was Rebekah was so busy doing alone in her room, while the rest of the Kalyptra worked in the fields and gardens, or tended to the livestock, or took care of the house. Maybe she saw her position as more managerial. Or royal. Regardless, the Kalyptra didn't seem to have a problem with the way things were done at Eclipse. They gave the appearance of perfect contentment and satisfaction with their lives. Joanna might be the exception to that, though. There was something different about her. She didn't possess the same blissful tranquility as the others. Or maybe it was just my presence that was disrupting her sense of well-being. I wished I knew more about what had happened between her and my mom, but now that I had promised Rebekah I would avoid her I couldn't exactly ask her to tell me all of my mom's old buried secrets.

So, of course she would be the first person I ran into when I got lost trying to find my way back to my room.

“There you are,” she said when she saw me. “I've been looking for you.”

She carried a guitar by its neck. Just looking at the instrument stole my breath. It was small and delicate, made from what I guessed was rosewood, and carved on the back was a design of moon phases and moths.

Joanna held the guitar out to me. “Here,” she said. “It belonged to your mom.”

“Really?” I accepted the guitar, cradling it against my chest and running my hands over the wood. This guitar was special, an instrument that might have a mind of its own. A voice it had earned from years of play. But I sensed it was a voice that had not been heard in a very long time.

“Rebekah wanted me to get rid of it after your mom left,” Joanna said. “But I couldn't do it. Your mom loved that guitar more than … well, more than a lot of things.”

I opened my mouth to ask her to tell me more about my mom and how she'd been when she was Kalyptra, but then I remembered my promise to Rebekah and I closed it again.

“Thanks,” I said simply.

Joanna shrugged, as if it was no big deal, but I could tell by the intensity in her expression that it was. “She would have wanted you to have it. Your mom, not Rebekah.”

I wondered if Rebekah would be angry if she found out I had it, and even more angry if she found out who had given it to me. I momentarily considered handing it back to Joanna, telling her I couldn't take it. But who was I kidding? My hand felt fused to the guitar. I couldn't give it back now if I wanted to.

Joanna read my mind. “It would be best if you kept it in your room. Don't bring it to the circle tonight. Don't let Rebekah know you have it. Stig has plenty of others you can choose from.” Her dark eyes darted left and right, as though to make sure we were alone. “I suggest you play it right away,” she said in a lowered voice. “And listen carefully to what it has to tell you.”

She brushed her hands over the front of her dress as though to wipe away some invisible trace of dust, and walked past me without a goodbye.

Eventually, I found my way back to my room, went inside, and shut the door. I forgot all about taking a shower, and even my hunger for anima was pushed to the back of my mind as I sat down on my bed with the guitar perched delicately in my hands.

I strummed the song I'd played at Folk Yeah! Fest. It seemed like a thousand years had passed since I'd stood on that stage and played my song in front of all those strangers. The festival organizers had said they'd let the contest participants know within a week who had won. Did it even matter anymore if I ended up the winner? After the festival, I'd entertained a few brief hours of optimism that my life might be headed in the right direction, but now everything had changed.

The notes of my song twanged sweet and buzzy, and I felt their vibration in the air, across my cheeks, and in my fingertips. But there was something a little discordant about the sound, a subtle wrongness. I remembered what Joanna had said about listening carefully to the guitar's voice, and I tuned it several times, trying to get the sound perfect, but the slight flaw remained. Still, it was an imperfection I could live with.
True beauty is in the imperfections
, as my mom liked to say.

I played through my song once from beginning to end, and then stopped, pressed my palm over the strings to quiet them, and closed my eyes.

The song I played at Folk Yeah! Fest was the song I'd been playing when Blake saw me the first time after moving to Rushing, before he ever knocked on our door and brought us a plate of his famous oatmeal raisin surprise cookies. I'd taken my guitar into the woods behind our house to practice. There was something divine, almost holy about the bare-bones resonance of an acoustic guitar surrounded by forest and running water. I'd had no idea I wasn't alone that day, not until a month later when Blake admitted that he'd been spying on me. He said he would have come to talk to me then, but he didn't want to interrupt, didn't want me to stop playing.

It occurred to me that the woods where Blake had stood when he first heard me play were the same woods I had destroyed. So much of my old life was gone now, or felt like it was fading, like a dream after waking. I missed Blake terribly. The longing to see him was so deep it made it hard to breathe, like he was a kind of medicine, same as my asthma inhaler or the anima that had eased my lungs that morning. But at the same time I was glad to be away from him, from my mom, and even from Erin. I didn't want them to see me the way I was now. I'd read once that you were only truly yourself when you were alone in the woods with no one watching. I wasn't alone at Eclipse, but I felt, for the first time in a long time, like I was closer to my true self here.

I didn't mean to, but I spent the rest of the day holed up in my room, playing quietly. I remembered the tune of the lullaby my mom used to sing to Erin and me, and I played that and expanded on it, giving it my own spin, adding to the lyrics until the lullaby became a full song. I missed lunch. I missed dinner. Suddenly I looked up and realized the sun had set and the sky was the color of blueberries sprinkled with sugar.

My fingers ached. I held them up in front of my face and saw deep, red grooves in the skin from making chords. I bit my lip and groaned. This was not the first time I had gone into a kind of dissociated state while playing guitar. When I was in the zone, everything else faded into the background. But now that I'd come back to reality, I was fully aware of the empty hunger in me, the beginnings of cramps in my muscles, and a feverish chill across my skin.

A knock on the door startled me and I shot to my feet, scanning the room wildly for a place to hide the guitar. I lifted the mattress and quilts and stowed it beneath, then arranged my pillows and blankets into a haphazard mess so the shape wasn't noticeable. Hopefully whoever had come to call on me would simply assume I was a slob.

When I opened the door, I found Cyrus outside, arms crossed tightly over his chest and a glower on his face.

“Where have you been?”

“Here,” I said.

His eyes narrowed and he scrutinized my face as though suspicious that I might be lying. “You've been in your room all day? Doing what?”

“Thinking.” I shrugged, and raised my eyebrows at him. “Why did you look for me everywhere but in my room?”

“Because…” He trailed off and shook his head. “I don't know. I just thought you might've gone off on your own. You have to be careful. It isn't safe to go into the woods alone. There are coyotes, wolves even.”

“Oh, I get it. You thought I tried to escape.” I was kidding, but then I saw Cyrus avert his eyes. “You did, didn't you?” I said.

“The thought crossed my mind.”

“Why would I want to run away?” I asked, leaning against the doorjamb. “What aren't you telling me?”

“Oh, there's plenty you don't know about us yet,” he said, relaxing and cocking a wolfish smile. “So come with me and I'll teach you a thing or two.”

I hesitated in the doorway. The hunger inside me for more anima was insistent, but not yet an emergency. What did seem like an urgent situation was the fact that I could smell my own body, and I had to pee.

“Mind if I get cleaned up and change first?” I asked.