Where Bluebirds Fly (22 page)

“I have read so much about Salem, and I feel you need to understand some of the reasons why the trials happened, before returning, Verity.”

Somewhere in the back of my head, warning bells clang of the danger in loving someone so fully. I hope my color doesn’t betray me again.

“I’m listening.”

“Many scholars have studied it. Why so many were hanged, and accused.”

The fear oozes out of my cracked heart, and I swallow, not really wanting to hear more. “How many die, True? When I left, only Goody Bishop had been hanged.”

“All told, nineteen were hanged, one man pressed to death, and two dogs. A total of 141 people were arrested.”

My hands cradle my head. “John and I were there for the first dog.”

He nods grimly. “One of the first reasons historians consider is a condition called mass hysteria, it’s one of Ram’s favorites.” He rolled his eyes playfully, obviously trying to ease the tight look on my face.
 

I swallow the lump in my throat. “The paranoia began in the Motherland in the year of our Lord, 1641, when King Charles the first, declared it a capital crime to be a witch. The colonies are still under English Law.”

It isn’t until he sits, and slides his arm around my shoulders that I realize they’re shaking. Convulsing, almost.

“I know all about it, love,” he murmurs quietly. “Mass hysteria is when a group of people show the same symptoms, sometimes without a physical cause. I can imagine what it was like there, especially for women. No playtime for girls, no using your imagination—it was bound to result in someone acting out.”

I give a reluctant nod for him to continue.

“I think I found a better explanation. Some have suggested, perhaps the people of Salem were poisoned… by a mold, called ergot, on the crops. It happens during the rainy season. It’s toxic and causes many of the same symptoms—hallucinations, seizures. It would explain many of the behaviors. I imagine it’s a combination of these, and just plain malice by some who are jealous of others in their community, or who are trapped in their position, say as a servant?”

Revelations dawn inside my head. Pieces of puzzles falling into place. “Like Mercy…” I think of the witch cake.

“Yes, like Mercy Lewis. Everyone remembers her name, even now.”

“Really? That is unbelievable. After all this time?”

He nods. “A man wrote a play called The Crucible with Mercy as a main character. It’s quite famous.” He stands, pacing again, his finger absently tracing the peppering of reddish stubble on his chin.
 
“Another consideration is an illness called Lyme’s disease. The point being, if John is ill, I believe it’s physical. We need to get him back here, so we can care for him properly.”

“We must go soon. Our clocks do not pass the time equally, and I have no idea what month it is in Salem. My timepiece stopped when I stepped over the bridge.”

“Verity, I don’t think you have to worry.”

His eyes stare again, intense and blue. “When I first met you—well, I couldn’t get you out of my head. I searched and searched for you in Salem documents. You are nowhere in history, love. Neither is John.”

“What does that mean, Truman?”

“Maybe you are
supposed
to come here,
with me
. To save your souls.” He looks thoughtful. “Or for you to save me.”

* * *

Chapter 20

Truman took one long bracing look at the orphanage.

Possibly his last.

Guilt at leaving Ram and Sunshine burdened with his responsibilities chaffed his conscience.

“Are you ready, love?”

“I am. Truman, remember all the rules. I work for the Putnams, I am a servant. People do not acknowledge me, or touch me.”

He stopped her at the entrance to the cornfield and spun her to face him. He gave her a quick kiss. “I hope we aren’t there long. I’m quite used to doing that now.”

Verity stepped back, eyes roving over his attire one last time. She nodded her approval.

They walked into the corn, winding deeper with every step.

“You are a gentleman, just arrived from Scotland—as we can’t change your accent very much, can we?” She brushed his shoulders compulsively, like a servant would her master. “I’ve heard your attempts at American, they’re pathetic. You’re arrived in the colonies to start anew and want to employ me, after finding me wandering alone in the fields.”

“Yes. Show me one more time where the witch dungeon will be.”

He pulled out a 1692 map he’d found online, and it correlated perfectly with Verity’s memories of landmarks and homes in Salem Village and Town.
 

“Here.” She pointed several miles away. “The cornfield is close to the Putnam homestead.”

“Let’s go.” He grasped her hand and they trotted through the corn.

Music leached in and around them from another row. And the whispers.

“Do you hear it?” Verity asked. Her mouth screwed up in fear and revulsion.

“Yes. I think the corn personifies your fears, gives them life. It showed me mine.” His mind shot back images of his younger self, alone and abandoned.

Something grave passed through her eyes and she gave a little shudder. “Yes, definitely.”

He cocked his head. “But the whispers, those are new. Perhaps voices from another time?”

A deep rumble shook the ground beneath their feet, rising like a dog’s growl before the bark. Verity froze in place, staring at the dirt.

The ground shook and a fissure erupted, sending Verity’s arms pin-wheeling as she grappled for her footing. Her boot-tips jutted half over the edge as she tottered, staring down into a deep crevice in the earth.

Truman lurched forward. His fingers closed on her elbow, yanking her backwards. She tumbled into him, chest heaving. Instinctively he wrapped his arms around her.

Around them, the cornstalks twitched to life. With a deafening thunderclap, a tempest erupted, the howling wind providing a harmony to the background melody of the corn.

The stalks bowed in half, parting like a stage curtain.

He pushed her behind him. Her hand trembled on his back. He could feel her clutching fingers through his shirt.

She whispered in his ear, “Oh my love, what now?”

One image blurred to life on the corn-stage. Verity appeared in a long, elegant white dress; her red hair spiraled to perfection on top of her head. A tiny crown glittered with faux jewels.

“I’m a bride.” Her voice was breathless. “Or a princess.”

He turned to meet her gaze. “That’s a modern dress.”

A crack of thunder scolded him and his attention shot back to the weird stage-show in the corn. The second scene appeared through a filmy mist between the rows. The stalks rattled like skeleton bones.

Verity in her colonial garb, John at her side-as they hastened down a muddy dirt road, toward the corn.

Truman shivered. “It’s choices. It’s showing you choices.”

“As much as I want you—more than anything, ever…my heart will turn to dead stone in my chest without you in my life—I must and shall choose John.”

“Of course you must, he needs you. I would do the same. Perhaps they aren’t either-or.” He squeezed her hand.

The tempest blazed throughout the scenes, cutting a trough down the center of the rows. The dirt flew up on either side of it—as it fell—it suspended. The dirt shimmered madly, changing to deep red flakes. It passed within inches of their feet, and Verity grasped his arm. Snips of sound flew in every direction, making them feel surrounded.

A lion’s roar, an elephant’s trumpet…a growling—for which he had no name. It seemed to be the conductor of the orchestral timepiece.

“The corn is judge and jury, too. I feel it, thrumming through the air, a vibration. Like my lying sense.” His head swung around wildly, his breath quickening with the realizations. “I see spiral colors wrapped around the corn, like a kaleidoscope. It’s
every
color, Verity.” He squinted, shielding his eyes; the intensity was splitting his head.

“I’m not afraid.” Verity said, incredulous. Her face proclaimed her own epiphany. “I think it’s a guardian. I was always terrified of the storms back home. This place…gives fear a body. That cyclone’s a living fear.”

She laughed. It was a disturbed sound, devoid of humor. “And now that I’ve heard the rest of that song…it makes sense.”

Something she said sparked a moment of déjà vu. It was on the tip of his tongue, just out of reach. A thunderclap erupted.

“We have to go. It’s open, I knew it would be.” Truman pointed to the bright blue sky.

The bluebirds appeared, trilling and weaving between them. They ran down the row, toward the bridge. A second moon was visible at the end of the cornrows.
 

He grasped her hand. “We have to go.”

* * *

Chapter 21

The bridge rumbles as we approach it, clattering up and down as if its old boards are shivering.

This may be your final chance. Say it.

I turn to him, ignoring the crush of fear in my head. “I love you, True.”

“I love you, too. You know it, don’t you?” His eyes mirror my desperation.

“Always.”

He thrusts out his hand, and I wrap his fingers in mine, cherishing every second of his rough skin. We bolt forward, up and over the apex of the bridge. The flexuous door is sticky as we step inside.

Darkness. Spinning.
 

Then a burst of light so bright, I feel the barbs of it sticking in my eyes. His hand…it’s squeezing mine, tighter. Tighter.

His hand slips down and desperately clutches, crushing my fingertips.

Suddenly, the feel of its gone, and I’m alone. The hornets roar in exultation and I’m weeping.

The fear’s reborn; a live, writhing serpent, waiting to swallow me whole.
 

The air liquefies at once, as it did the day I first entered his world. The first day of my real life. Streaming visions of rippling colors appear and disappear at ticking intervals. My hands cover my soaked cheeks and shield my eyes.

Gunfire, women screaming, wailing infants, overlaid with shouts of joy, and sighs of adoration assault my ears. A whirlwind of emotive sound. And under it, the steady drone and buzz of my terror.

My mind is bloated, as if one more sensation enters, it will burst into a million fragments.

My hands burn and I can’t stop crying. I bend them into tight fists, clenching the snow. The Salem cold immediately penetrates, sending stinging pangs through my palms, all the way to my fingertips. I will myself upright, but vertigo smacks me back down. I try again, more gingerly, and scan the cornfield. My eyes confirm what my heart refuses to admit.

I am alone.

Anger races through me at the stark hopelessness of this place. It matters not how hard you work, or what good you do. I am sewn into my place in society, with no hope of rescue. I curl into a ball in the snow.
 

I see John in my head, waiting for me. Hands outstretched. I will just close my eyes for a moment, I lie to myself.
 

Tears stream, freezing immediately to icy pellets on my cheeks. “Truman? True? Where are you?”

My boot strikes something hard as I struggle to stand.

Truman’s journal. I reach down and hug it to my chest as I stumble through the corn, reaching its mouth.
 

He is nowhere.

But Salem
is
—the Putnam farm stands before me. Now that I’ve seen a film,
my
whole world, and its grim reality, appear black and white to me.

The color of Truman’s world is already a distant memory, or a page ripped from someone else’s story. Perhaps a story I told myself.

The fear is crippling me, weighting my chest, as if I am the one being pressed to death.

Behind me, I hear the girl, Judy, singing. I see her face plainly, not much older than I.

“No. He is here. He must be.”

Mercy stands, stock-still on the porch, shaking her head in disbelief. She wrenches open the door to the house and bellows, “Goody Putnam! It’s Verity! She’s returned!”

* * *

Chapter 22

“What! No! Verity!”

Her fingertips slipped away. A pulling sensation rent them apart.
 

He felt the door thickening under his hands. She was gone—without him. Back to that place. Where she was helpless—had no rights.

He beat on it. Both fists sunk and stuck, like a pliable mold. “She needs me! They will kill her!”

The wind blew past his ear. Voices rode it, like the bluebirds on the morning air.
It isn’t time
.

“It bloody well is time!”

He kicked at the bottom of the door, which was hardening into an icy wall. His boot connected, and a crack splintered up to waist level. He wrestled, pulling back his fists, leaning his full weight backward.