Part Seven

Maple’s heartbeat began to hurt when she walked away. She forced each breath in and out, demanded that her body continue living when it wanted to crumble to dust around her.

She hadn’t realized how far out of control things were until the night before. How far out of control she was.

She had never wanted to be this girl. Not an orphan, not a stripper, not an accessory to murder. When Yared brought that memory of another life rushing up to her skin, she remembered the person she could have been this time around. She was lonely for that person.

These clothes—a fringed suede skirt that hung just below her knees, boots, and an off-the-shoulder white blouse. Whose idea had they been? Certainly not hers; she felt like a bad country western headliner. She wanted straight pants and a V-neck sweater in earth tones and something to tie her hair back with. And her smart mouth—"Did you fuck Kiria?" Just a weapon she had developed. She hadn’t wanted to spar with Yared. She hadn’t wanted any of this.

Galdwyn’s front door was the only one in the village with a lock, but he only used it when he was doing something devious. The knob turned easily in Maple’s hand and she walked inside.

"Hello?" Galdwyn called cheerily from the kitchen.

Maple let her apothecary box hit the floor loudly and dumped her canvas bag next to the door. "It’s me."

He chuckled as she walked into the kitchen. Galdwyn stood at the sink with a straight razor in one hand and a whet stone in the other, sharpening the blade. He gave her a giant smile and held out his arms.

Maple stopped in the doorway.

"Darling!" he cried. "You’re home!"

She knew right then that it had all gone to hell.

"I was worried, I thought something had gone wrong."

"Car trouble," she told him.

"Car trouble," he repeated. His eyes were a lovely shade of blue—Maple couldn’t bare to look into them. "You should have called."

"Sorry."

"No problem." He let the words hang and then said, "There’s fresh blood in the fridge. Help yourself."

Maple’s mind was tumbling, trying to find the danger she knew was hiding nearby. "Tish," Galdwyn called, "it’s time for your bath."

She winced. She hated Tish’s baths.

"Is there something you need, Maple?" he asked, seeing that she was still standing there.

"No," she told him quickly.

"Then do you need help taking your bags to your room?"

"No."

On her way to the spare bedroom, she passed Tish walking to the bathroom in a frumpy pink terrycloth robe that barely reached her knees.

The bedroom was exactly as she had left it. She didn’t touch anything before walking back to the kitchen.

The blood in the refrigerator was fresh. So fresh it made her a little nervous as she poured a juice tumbler full.

"Maple?" Galdwyn called.

"Yes?"

"Come here a moment."

Her fingernails dug against the glass milk bottle full of blood. She carried it in one hand and the tumbler in the other as she went into the bathroom.

Galdwyn was sitting on the toilet lid. Tish was lying half submerged in a tub full of clear water. With dull motions she rubbed one arm with a bar of soap.

Maple’s stomach clenched and she took a long sip of the blood. "What is it?" she asked.

Galdwyn had his whetstone and razor and was sharpening again. The sound filled the room like a train passing by.

"How did you do it?" he asked.

"Do what?"

"How did you kill Yared?"

"I bludgeoned him and then cut his heart out."

"Did you bring it back with you?"

"I forgot."

"Lift you arm, dear," he said to Tish. The girl raised her endless, ape-like arm so that the blond prickles beneath it were exposed. Her eyes flashed for an instant and Maple saw terror that lay as deep within her as the core of the earth.

Her stomach turned all the way over. Galdwyn touched his razor to Tish’s armpit and dragged it slowly down. The hairs made a rushing sound like dry leaves as they snapped.

"Tell me about it," Galdwyn said, his concentration still on his daughter.

"About what?" Maple couldn’t even remember what they had been talking about.

Galdwyn climbed off the toilet and onto his knees so that he could get a closer view of Tish’s skin. The razor dipped in and out of the water, sparkling silver in the light.

"How you killed him."

"Uh," she began. "I, uh," she couldn’t think with him shaving Tish’s armpit right there, "went to the human girl’s house. It was just before dawn and they were all asleep. I hit him in the head with a...a marble book end and he..."

A thin line of blood had appeared running the length of the razor blade. Drops of ruby red spilled down Tish’s ghost white skin. The razor slipped out of his hand and onto the yellow floor mat.

"...woke up..." Maple said hoarsely.

Galdwyn put his mouth to Tish’s wound and she heard him sucking. Tish’s chest shook. He buried his entire face in her armpit, clenching her shoulder to keep her near.

Maple understood why Tish never spoke: she wouldn’t have been able to do anything but scream.

Maple’s throat closed. Tish’s arm had fallen outside the rim of the tub and was quivering as Galdwyn suckled frantically at it. Her fingertips brushed the razor, stopped, and hovered over it. For a moment she grasped it, and then Galdwyn lifted his face and her fingers went limp.

That was the closest Tish ever came to resistance.

He turned and looked at Maple. "Then what happened?" he asked calmly, but she couldn’t speak. There was blood smeared across his face like frosting on a child’s and it was pooling in the creases between his gums and his teeth.

She gagged and he sprang onto her. She dropped the tumbler of blood but managed to hold onto the glass milk bottle as he pinned her arms to the wall above her head.

"What happened then?" he demanded.

She looked at Tish, who was blinking sleepily and taking no notice of them. Galdwyn released her left wrist just long enough to snatch the bottle of blood out of her grasp and smash it against the wall beside her face. Shards of glass rode blood waves through the air, onto her white blouse, into her skin and she shut her eyes hard.

"Look at me!" Galdwyn shouted. He smacked her in the face and she forced her eyes open. They stung with blood and tears.

Despite the great storm of hatred Maple felt toward him, she had never been completely free of her attraction to him. His keen eyes always hinted that he could be true to her if they could dig deep enough into each other, and his laugh lines mapped out a smile she longed to see. Always beneath his torture, his tests, his beatings, was the heart of perfect love if she could just prove herself his equal.

"Tell me what happened then," he said without anger. His breath stank of blood, sweat, and soap.

Maple voice’s gave two false starts and then she managed to say, "His skull broke."

He nodded, slipping his knee between hers.

"But he didn’t make any noise, so the others didn’t wake up."

"Were his eyes open?"

He began lowering her arms. His grip on her wrists remained firm.

"No," Maple whispered. "They were closed. I hit him on the bridge of the nose the second time and they both popped."

"Then what?"

"I got a pair of scissors and stuck them in his chest. I dug out his heart."

"Was there a lot of blood?"

"Tons." He guided her hands to his waist and pressed his hips against hers.

"Did anyone wake up?"

"No. They were in the other room. I got in my car and left."

"Where did you go?"

He leaned so close that if she moved her mouth to speak, her lips would brush his. She could taste Tish’s blood as if it was soaking her tongue.

His eyes were molten fields, hay and lavender and light green grass. She saw her own reflection in them. She saw him speaking to her while he was silent.

If she could show him that she was as strong as he was, that she laughed in the face of incestuous horror, he would take her away from it. Once the fear lost its hold over her, it was useless and he would be so proud of her, he would reward her so greatly and kiss her so sweetly...

She wanted to crawl into this distraction, let it take her over, hide in his body as he hid in hers. She would let him consume her if she could leave this world.

"Maple?" he whispered. His lower lip slid over her blood-drenched mouth.

"What?" She was shaking so hard she could barely stand and would have fallen if his hips hadn’t pinned hers to the wall.

"Where did you go?"

"Um, here."

"You drove here?"

"Yes."

"Right after you killed Yared?"

She nodded weakly.

"You drove here," he repeated, "right after you killed Yared, yesterday morning?"

She didn’t even know what he was talking about. Her disgust and desire to pass out were underwritten by the knowledge that if she let him take her to bed he would be the best lover she ever had, potbelly and all.

"It took you thirty-two hours to drive less than sixty miles?" he asked in a slither.

And she realized her mistake. "No," she told him. "No, the car broke down. It was the transmission and they had to get a part from Huttonville. I spent the night in a motel in Kensey."

"Ah," Galdwyn said, nodding slowly. "So you didn’t leave until this morning."

"As soon as they had the part installed. Then I drove back here."

"Ah," he repeated, and he let go of her. He turned back to the tub.

Her body went cold with a combination of relief, disappointment, and exhaustion. She shrank against the wall. Her hands were so wet with blood she defeated herself in trying to wipe her eyes. The glass cut into her cheeks like trowels digging into the earth and she grabbed a hand towel off the rack.

When she looked up from rubbing her face, it was just in time to see Galdwyn descend on her with the straight razor. He was sinking the metal into her chest before she even had time to raise her arms in defense.

The blade sank between her collarbone and the top of her rib cage, all the way to the hilt. Maple felt it forced out half an inch when she hit the floor on her back.

Galdwyn got down on top of her with his knee digging into her stomach. He grabbed hold of her hair and slammed her scull against the floor a few times before jerking the razor out.

She couldn’t make a sound. The pain swirled like a tornado inside her, sucking up her voice.

"So," Galdwyn asked conversationally, "I guess it must have been yesterday, after you killed Yared but before your car broke down, that you helped him come in here and gather up the pieces of his sister. Really, Maple, why the fuck were you standing outside the house like that? Half the village saw you."

Her head met the floorboard again and then he climbed off her. "Get up," he said. When she only shuddered he kicked her in the side.

Maple released a balloon of breath and rolled over. Galdwyn kicked her twice more while she climbed to her knees and then to her feet.

"Come here."

She followed him down the hallway. Blood was running down her chest and onto the carpet like a leaky faucet. The world quivered tentatively.

Galdwyn opened the basement door but didn’t turn on the lights. Instead he stepped back and tilted his chin at Maple. A familiar scent caught in her nostrils.

"Now you’re going to tell me everything," he said. "Because if you don’t, she’s going to pay for it."

He flipped the light switch. Below, sitting on a cheap plastic lounge chair with her sunset orange hair in tangles and her clothes matted with grime, was Amber.

Maple was trying to speak when Galdwyn kicked her down the stairs. Her head hit the second step and she blacked out.