The May Queen Murders (21 page)

“Ivy, no!”

The cold water around me met a growing cold inside me, begin-

ning in my gut and spreading down my veins. I peeled back Rook’s

fingers from my head and waded a half circle back to the water

wheel.

“Please don’t,” he begged and again sloshed with me through the

water. “You don’t wanna see that.”

But I had to see. I had to know.

Close to the wheel, I eased through the water until what appeared

to be wavy, reddish-brown marsh grass floated on the surface. My

bones hard and muscles harder, I slipped my fingers between the

grasses, except it wasn’t grass. It was wet hair. Wet curls. Soggy and

discolored from sitting in the water for days. Hair clinging to my

skin. Her May Day skirt wrapped around one of the wheel’s paddles.

My fingers pushed down beneath the water, and I felt her. The eyes

open and fringed by lashes, the straight nose, and hard pearls of her

teeth. Her lips were gone. All of her beneath the water, out of sight.

The mill wheel groaned. Heather’s body loosened and submerged

161

further, yet I was stuck in the middle of the spinning water wheel.

Rook shouted, but I couldn’t understand him. One arm fished

through the wheel’s scaffold, then a leg. I held my wet skirt close

against me to keep it from snarling on the wheel. Almost free.

My head jerked, my hair knotted and pulled behind me. My head

rolled back on my neck and faced the glare of the sun overhead be-

fore I fel , my back splashing the water where there was only cold and

darkness.

162

Chapter Thirteen

Terra’s fingers were all black and chewed up, and no one

was all that sure if the vultures got her or if it was that

damn Birch Markle. The devil had that boy crouchin’ over

her dead body and lickin’ the girl’s blood off his knife.

Ice water flooded my nose, my mouth. My hair clouded around my

head and over my face. Giving in to the lull of the water’s current

seemed much easier than propelling myself to the surface. The water

flowed around me until my soaked hair and skirt no longer weighed

me down — rather, I became weightless.

It was fitting in a way. To lose Heather, find her, and then lose

myself.

I could stay with her.

My fingers stretched through the water, and I turned my head.

Eyes opening to take in the murky river water. There was grit and

mud and grass, but there was also Heather’s fish-white face and con-

stel ations of freckles. Her dead head creaked on its neck, swiveling

to face me, lipless mouth forming words. Since she had no breath, no

bubbles escaped as she spoke.

163

Find it.

“Find what?”

Her eyes were open, the green gone from them. Her teeth clacked

in blue-black gums.

Find it, Ivy.

My fingers bumped against hers. They felt like stumpy logs of clay,

and shreds of her skin flaked against mine.

I took hold anyway. Cousins. Almost sisters.

Together again.

"

“Help! Somebody, help me!”

The voice. It sounded like Rook, but not. He was molasses and

black earth, and this voice was jagged, full of rocks and twigs.

My cheek chilled as wind licked off water droplets. A hand cupped

my head while an arm wrapped behind my knees. “Ivy, wake up.

Please, God, no. I love you. Wake up . . .
Somebody fucking help me!
”

No. Don’t take me away.

I liked it in the water. In the dark. With Heather.

"

Cattails rustled while a horse gave an impatient stomp. My back

pressed against the shore. The underwater weightlessness vanished.

My arms, my legs, all my body was heavy, so much that if the shore

164

wished to open and swallow me, it could. My mind was loosely aware

of buzzing.

“I gotta see my daughter!”

A hand pushed the hair drying across my forehead. A trail of

sludge wound down from my lips around my jaw and neck to pool

behind my ear. My eyelids crusted with sediment. Somehow, I wiped

my face enough to blink.

Sun so blinding. I flinched.

“Thank God.”

Rook sat beside me, and though I had no way of being certain, I

suspected he’d been crying. I tried to speak, but a clot of river wa-

ter forced up my throat to spill from my mouth. Rook pushed me

up and smacked my back to dislodge more. As the coughs settled, I

rubbed my nose to blot the water reeking of dirt from my face.

Horses. Denial Mil . I recalled going there with Rook and wading

in the river because the water wheel had stopped turning. Some hill-

men were examining the wheel with Flint and Jasper Denial. Near

the top of the riverside, my father rushed up to Sheriff, his cheeks

whitened. “Jay, they said Ivy’s down here. Is she —”

“We had a bad scare, but my boy got her breathin’ again. Promise

kept, Timothy. I wish I’d done better.”

Papa’s shoulders drooped. “Done better?”

Sheriff placed his hands on my father’s upper arms. I looked away

from the men, from Rook, and on the shore lay Heather. Not scream-

ing, not crying out, I crawled over to the gray girl in the red ruffled

skirt. The ruffles were tinged dingy brown, like her curls. Dark water

165

beaded in her nostrils. Two silver coins covered her eyes. I knelt over

her, my hands in my lap, then on her forearm.

“Ivy?” Papa asked from behind me.

Heather’s mouth was too open, too wide without her lips. Such a

ghastly smile without any blood or color, so I ripped off my sleeve

and placed it over her face. Her shirt was stained with dark smears of

blood. She was stiff, so waxy, and chilled.

There was nothing of her magic and light. She was a muted husk

of what was once radiant. I squeezed my eyes, burying my face

against Heather’s shoulder. Tears stung my skin as they slipped down

my cheeks. My chest and throat distended with a horrible pain. The

finality of sorrow. Its wail shoved out of me to echo above the river,

and I held her closer. All the softness went out of her.

Heather was murdered.

But I’d I returned from nearly dead. To find out who did this to

her.

166

Chapter Fourteen

Oh, folks ran after Birch. Jackdaw Meriweather, his boy

Jay, all them with their hounds and rifles took off after

him into the woods. Thing is, Birch always liked the woods.

He knew them. He was the woods.

My mother’s feet formed twin shadows beneath my doorway. I rec-

ognized their shape, the thickness molding her calves. Sturdy legs

held up my world that had been obliterated two days prior.

Mamie’s blanket snuggled around my shoulders, and no mat-

ter the heat outside, I couldn’t warm up. “Death-touched,” Mamie

would’ve said.

When I was smal , a boy from the Glen called Jet Winslow became

death-touched. He was riding his bicycle near the highway when

a dairy truck collided with him. The damage to his head was bad

enough his hair from then on came in white where it should’ve been

brown. Jet’s folks called Mamie to pray over him with Pastor Gallo-

way. Doctoring with iodine and bandages did their part, but Mamie

had charms and herbs and a handful of tonics. She laid snakes on

167

him so his cold blood went into the serpent, but that boy never got

warm again.

Later, he suffocated in a silo of livestock feed, but that was an ac-

cident.

In my room, I waited for Heather’s fingers to rap the window.

Dead Heather or living Heather, I’d take either. My pencil shaded

her neck, her thin lips and the freckle on her nose, her reckless hair

and willowy frame. I sketched for hours. Days. Until my eyes were

bleary. Until my paper was blotted with tears.

If only I could wish her back. Even if she were so angry she slapped

me, I’d do it. Just to have her.

Each night, I blew out the candle at my bedside, smelling beeswax

and smoke drift to the ceiling to raise with it my prayer that the next

morning Heather’d stumble down the dirt path and laugh.

She wasn’t coming back.

“
Bonita?
” Mama called through the door.

I crossed the room, still dressed in the blanket and nightdress. In

my mirror’s face, my skin was ashen, gray, as if someone had spilled

water on me and sopped away half my color. Mama waited with a

cup of steaming root tea. Mamie had written down the recipe —

Sleep-Away-Sorrow. Mama brought the tea to me around the clock

to numb my mind and stop the nightmares. If she missed a dose, my

screams shook the windows.

“Rook’s here,” Mama said, passing me the cup.

I sipped. The tea was cold. It turned cold the second the mug en-

tered my grip.

Mama followed me to the bed. “See him, Ivy.”

168

I swallowed the rest of the tea in loud gulps. The herbs laid their

dumbing potion over me. Mama chose a cornflower-blue dress with

lacing up the front, then eased Mamie’s blanket off my shoulders,

untied my nightdress, and fluffed the blue dress over my head. She

didn’t say anything about the two necklaces I wore, Rook’s acorn to-

ken and Heather’s chain of found things.

After winding my hair in a loose braid, I found Rook in the kitch-

en. He stood on a stepladder affixing a potted strawberry vine by the

window. Pale berries poked out between glossy leaves.

“You only gotta water it,” he said as he descended the ladder.

I pulled out a chair from the table and flopped down on it. My

muscles were sand-heavy. No rain in days, and the house was dry.

Every surface — tabletop, counters, floors, pails — layered with dust.

A picnic basket covered by a checkered cloth rested on the table. At

first, I guessed food from Briar, but the buttery smell of Mama’s em-

panadas wafted out.

“You gonna talk?” Rook asked.

I eyed the back door. Rook stretched out his hand. My fingers

laced with his, and his skin was warm and toughened, and I stopped

from crying out because he felt so good and alive. I’d forgotten not

all skin felt like river mud.

“How much do you remember?” he asked once outside in the

yard.

“E-everything,” I replied.

“
Everything?
”

“What you said.” I studied my feet, too long and skinny for my

body. “W-when you wanted me to wake up. I heard you.”

169

“The thought of losin’ you scares the hell outta me.”

His fingers traced my arm when my mother opened the door. He

hopped back a step, ramming into a crate of ale bottles with his boot.

Mama raised an eyebrow as she brought me the picnic basket from

the kitchen table.

“Take this to your
tía
’s house,” she instructed.

“You comin’?” I asked.

“Ivy, I’m tired,” Mama said and started back to the door. “I’ve been

in
la cocina
making food for days. Just do this for
Mamá.
Rook can

go with you,
sí?
Don’t wander.”

Mama went back inside, and I lifted the edge of the basket’s cloth

where she’d stacked a dozen flaky golden empanadas. With the bas-

ket slung into my elbow’s crook, I reached inside my dress and with-

drew Heather’s necklace, running the charms between my thumb

and forefinger before stuffing the chain inside my col ar where, its