The Grace Year Read online

  “It’s funny,” Gertie says, without the slightest hint of a smile on her face. “The same thing that prevented me from getting a veil from one of the boys in my year is the exact reason I received one from Geezer Fallow.”

  “What do you mean?” Helen asks.

  She takes in a steeling breath. “When he lifted my veil and leaned in to kiss my cheek … he pinched me hard between my legs and whispered, ‘Depravity suits me just fine.’”

  I feel a strange heat move to my neck and cheeks.

  Maybe we all do, because it’s so quiet I swear I can hear one of the willow seeds settling between the blades of grass.

  Whatever was in that lithograph … I know Gertrude Fenton didn’t deserve this … and I’m fairly certain that Kiersten’s to blame.

  Returning to the camp with enough firewood to last the month, we start stacking it up in neat rows under the awning of the larder when screams echo from the eastern side of the clearing. Dropping everything, we run over to help, but what I find is all at once puzzling and chilling. The girls are lined up behind Ravenna, holding hands, as if creating some kind of barrier. Ravenna’s hands are raised to the sky. Muscles strained, veins bulging, sweat trailing down her neck, she appears to be grasping an invisible ball, trembling under the weight of it.

  “Keep going,” Kiersten says, urging her on. “Just a little lower.”

  “What’s she doing … what’s going on?” Martha whispers.

  “Shut up, dummy,” one of the girls hisses from behind her veil. “She’s making the sun go down.”

  Patrice passes it on, as if everyone isn’t hanging on every syllable. “She thinks she’s making the sun set.”

  “Maybe she is,” Helen whispers, staring in awe.

  “It does feel earlier than yesterday,” Lucy adds.

  As they’re watching her grunt and sweat and strain, I can see it in their eyes. This is what they’ve been waiting for. This is what they thought their grace year would be.

  I want to tell them that the sun will set a little earlier every day until the solstice, but even I’m starting to wonder.

  When the sun finally reaches its resting place, Ravenna collapses to the earth in a heap of sweat-drenched flesh. The girls rush in around her, picking her up, patting her on the back, congratulating her.

  “I knew you could do it.” Kiersten reaches for the end of Ravenna’s braid, pulling the red silk ribbon free. The release I feel is undeniable. It’s not just the idea of feeling dusk move through my hair, although that must feel like heaven—it’s the sense of unwavering purpose they share.

  As Ravenna kneels down to pray, they join her.

  “Deliver me from evil. Let this magic burn through me so I can return a purified woman, worthy of your love and mercy.”

  “Amen,” the girls whisper from beneath their veils.

  Kneeling in the dirt, barefoot, eyes to God, bathed in golden light, they look like something not of this earth. No longer girls, but women on the verge of coming into their power. Their magic.

  I promised myself I would keep my feet firmly rooted in the soil, that I wouldn’t give in to superstition and flights of fancy, so why am I trembling?

  Dinner around the bonfire is quiet, tense. Each group clinging to their secrets. I want to air our grievances, get everything out in the open so we can work together, but that’s clearly never going to happen, not as long as Kiersten’s in charge.

  “What are you staring at?” Kiersten asks.

  I quickly avert my gaze.

  Kiersten whispers something to Jenna, Jenna to Jessica, Jessica to Tamara, and I know they’re talking about me. I don’t know what kind of lies she’s spreading, what kind of clever new nickname she’s given me, but she’s obviously up to something.

  A high-pitched shriek rings out from the forest, making everyone stop midbreath and stare into the dark woods.

  “It’s one of the ghosts,” Jenna whispers. “I heard that if you get too close, they can take over your body. Make you do things you don’t want to do.”

  “Isn’t that what happened to Melania Rushik?” Hannah asks. “I heard they got into her head, whispered things, beckoned her into the woods with the promise of a veil, and when she finally succumbed, they spit her body out of the barrier in twelve different pieces.”

  The noise rings out again, which sets off a flurry of gasps and nervous whisperings of who the ghosts will go after first.

  “It’s an elk,” I say.

  “How would you know?” Tamara snaps.

  “Because I used to go into the northern forests with my father this time of year to check on the trappers who didn’t make it in for trading. It’s looking for a mate.”

  “Whatever it is … it’s creepy,” Helen says, nuzzling Dovey under her cloak.

  “You think you know everything, but you don’t,” Jessica says, glaring at me.

  “I know that we chopped enough wood to last the month, made the meals, cleaned up, built rain barrels … what did you do?”

  “You’re wasting your time with all that,” Kiersten says with a placid smile. “Every day that goes by that you don’t embrace your magic is a day lost.”

  “We should get to bed,” I say, standing up, faking a yawn. “We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow … you know, building a washing station, a tub … things that will actually help us survive.”

  “You may think you’re helping them, but you’re not,” Kiersten says. “You’re only holding them back.”

  I pretend not to hear her, but I’m bad at pretending.

  “I hope that tub’s for Dirty Gertie,” one of the veiled girls calls after us. “She’s going to need it.”

  Laughter erupts around the campfire. I want to go back and clobber them, but Gertie shakes her head. Short. Precise. She fixes me with the same look my mother gave me when my father delivered my veil to the church.

  “Don’t,” she whispers.

  As the other girls file past us into the lodging house, I hold Gertie back. “I know it was Kiersten’s lithograph. You should tell the others.”

  “That’s my business,” she says firmly. “Promise you won’t interfere.”

  “Promise,” I reply, feeling bad for pushing her. “But can you at least tell me why you took the blame?”

  “I thought it would be easier,” Gertie says, staring straight ahead, but I can hear the emotion in her voice. “I thought if I took the blame she would—”

  “Coming?” Martha says, holding the door open.

  Gertrude hurries along, more than happy to end the conversation.

  With the lanterns low, we settle into our beds, peering up at the spiderwebs clinging to the beamed ceiling, trying not to imagine what’s happening around the fire.

  “What if it’s true?” Becca says, breaking the silence. “What if we’re wasting our time? You know what they’ll do to us if we come back without getting rid of all of our magic.”

  “We just got here,” I say, trying to position my body around the springs. “There’s plenty of time for all that. They’re just trying to scare us.”

  “It’s working,” Lucy says, pulling her blanket up to her nose.

  “I for one am in no hurry to lose my mind,” Martha says.

  “But I was a late bloomer,” Becca says, sheer panic in her hushed voice. “What if it’s the same with my magic? What if it comes too late and I can’t get rid of it in time?”

  “It’s not the same thing,” Patrice says.

  “How do you know?”

  A low groan echoes through the woods, making us all hold our breath.

  “It’s just another elk, right?” Nanette asks.

  I nod, though I’m not entirely sure.

  “Did you see the way Kiersten was looking at me tonight?” Lucy says from beneath her covers. “She’s always hated me. I have three younger sisters … if she makes me do something with her magic … if I walk into the woods and my body is unaccounted for—”

  “We’re getting carr
ied away,” I say. “This is what she wants. All we have to do is stick together. Be sensible.”

  “But you saw what Ravenna can do,” Ellie says.

  “All we saw was a girl holding an invisible ball,” I say.

  “But I felt it.” Molly presses her palms against her lower abdomen. “There was a moment when I saw the sun in her hands. They were one.”

  “I thought it was about to crack open between her fingers like a soft yolk,” Ellie whispers.

  I want to say something, find a reasonable explanation, but the truth is, I felt it, too.

  “Hey, where’s Helen?” I ask, noticing her empty bed, the absence of cooing.

  “She stayed by the fire,” Nanette says, staring toward the door.

  Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I swear I hear a hint of sadness in her voice, longing.

  Maybe they all wish they’d stayed behind.

  As much as I want to deny it, bury the thought, there’s a part of me that can’t help wondering if Kiersten was right … if I’m the one holding them back.

  Maybe there’s nothing wrong with the grace year. Maybe there’s something wrong with me.

  In the weeks that followed, while we were busy clearing away the scorched debris, building a covered area for cooking, making rain barrels, chopping wood, divvying up chores, Kiersten was busy “helping” the veiled girls embrace their magic.

  It started off with silly things, doling out little dares to try to jar their magic loose, singing hymns of Eve as they knotted flower crowns in the morning dew, sitting in a circle around the punishment tree telling cautionary tales, but what at first seemed like harmless tasks turned into something infinitely more dangerous. But isn’t that how every horrible thing begins? Slow. Insipid. A twisting of the screw.

  Night after night, Kiersten returned from the bonfire with another convert, glassy eyed, hair cascading down her back, making some wild claim or another.

  Tamara said she could hear the wind whispering to her, and Hannah said she made a juniper berry wither just by looking at it. I could chalk it all up to their imaginations, social conditioning, superstition gone awry, but they weren’t the only ones experiencing strange goings-on. Something was happening to the rest of us. Something I couldn’t explain.

  Along with dizzy spells, loss of appetite, double vision, it seemed like our irises were disappearing, soft black eroding away any color, any light. I kept thinking it was just exhaustion, or maybe some kind of illness passing through the camp, but the more I tried to make sense of it, the worse things seemed to get.

  And as the full moon drew near, we bled. All of us at the same time, even Molly, just like a pack of wolves.

  I tried to tell the girls that just because you can’t explain something, that doesn’t make it magic, but one by one they inched their beds closer to the other side of the room, drawn to wild tales of magic and mysticism.

  Honestly, I couldn’t blame them. I’d lived with these doubts about the grace year my entire life, and even I was starting to question things.

  Question my sanity.

  A few nights ago, as we were huddled around the fire, Meg swiped her hand through the flames. “I can’t feel it,” she exclaimed. As she looked to Kiersten, I felt something pass between them, a surge of invisible energy. Maybe it was all in my head, maybe it was Kiersten’s magic, a language I couldn’t understand, but in the next moment, Meg held her hand in the flames until her skin bubbled up like a hundred singing bullfrogs.

  “What are you doing?” I yelled as I grabbed on to her, pulling her back from the heat.

  Meg looked up at me, with those huge black eyes.

  She didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. She laughed.

  They all did.

  Soon, wild rumors of ghostly activities swept through the camp. Things were disappearing, being smashed to bits in the night. Interestingly enough, the ghosts were only going after the things I’d built, but I didn’t let it deter me.

  As crazy as it got in the camp, I tried my best to stick to routine, keep up with the chores, but it was getting harder and harder to rally even myself, let alone the other girls. I suppose sitting around the fire talking about ghosts and magic is a lot more appealing than hard labor, but I promised myself that I would keep my head. If the magic takes me, so be it, but I won’t give in without reason, without a fight.

  In the early-morning hours, with whoever’s willing, we head out to the western side of the clearing, to start on some futile project or another, but soon find ourselves lost in the clouds … the wind … the trees.

  It makes me think of the women in the county—draping their fingers over the water, tilting their faces toward the late-autumn wind, is this what they’re remembering? Is this what they’re trying to get back to?

  I feel like I’m missing something … a key piece of the puzzle. But when I look at the fence, the endless sea of stripped cedars stretching out for miles, it occurs to me—even though we’re sent here against our will, to live or die like animals, this is the most freedom we’ve ever had. That we’ll probably ever get.

  I don’t know why it makes me laugh. It’s not funny at all. But I find Gertie, Martha, and Nanette laughing along with me, until we’re crying.

  Walking back to the camp, there’s a sense of dread. Maybe it’s just the weather turning, but it feels like something more. Every day the tension seems to be mounting. What it’s mounting to, I cannot say, but it’s palpable, something you can feel in the air.

  As we approach the campfire, we find the girls already assembled, feeding on their own whispers, their dark eyes tracking us like slivers of wet shale.

  Grabbing a pitcher of water from the rain barrel, a handful of dried fruit and nuts from the larder, we escape their heavy gaze, retreating into the lodging house, only to find four more beds have been moved to the other side of the room—Lucy, Ellie, Becca, and Patrice have all succumbed. No one says a word, but I know we’re all wondering which one of us will be next. It doesn’t even feel like an if anymore, but a when.

  A mournful cry echoes through the forest, making me flinch. I’m not sure if it’s a nightmare or reality, but they feel like one and the same as of late.

  Listening closer, I only hear the heady lull of slumber all around me, the soft coo of Dovey sleeping in Helen’s arms. “Everything’s okay,” I whisper to myself.

  “Is it?” Gertrude asks.

  I turn on my side to face her. I want to tell her yes, but I’m not sure anymore. I’m not sure about anything. I can’t stop staring at her knuckles, the thick ropelike scars glinting pink and silver in the lamplight.

  “Go ahead and ask,” she whispers. “I know you want to.”

  “What do you mean?” I try to play it off, but as Gertie pointed out, I’m bad at pretending.

  I’m trying to find the words, how I can phrase this without causing her any more embarrassment, any more pain, but then she does it for me.

  “You want to know what was in that lithograph.”

  “If you don’t want to say, I underst—”

  “It was a woman,” she whispers. “She had long hair that was loose around her shoulders, ringlets barely skimming her breasts. A red silk ribbon coiled around her hand like a serpent. Her cheeks were flushed; her head was tilted up.”

  “Eyes to God,” I say, thinking of our lessons.

  “No,” she says in a dreamy tone. “Her eyes were half closed, but it felt like she was staring right at me.”

  “In pain?” I ask, remembering hearing about some pictures that were confiscated from the trappers a few years back. Women bound, contorted in ungodly shapes.

  “The opposite.” Gertrude looks up at me, eyes shining. “She looked happy. Rapturous.”

  My imagination is running wild. That goes against everything we’ve been taught. We’ve all heard the rumors about the women in the outskirts, that some of them might even enjoy it, but this woman had a red ribbon. She was clearly one of us. I swallow hard at the thought. �
��What were they doing to her?”

  “That’s the thing,” Gertrude whispers. “She was alone. She was touching herself.”

  The notion is so shocking that my breath catches in my throat.

  “Dirty Gertie,” someone hisses from the dark, and the entire room erupts in giggles. Jeers.

  I want to tell them it was Kiersten’s lithograph, that Gertie took the blame, but I made a promise. It’s not my story to tell.

  As I watch her sink back into her covers, my heart aches for her.

  To clear my head, get my mind off the deteriorating state of the camp, I set out to chop wood along the western perimeter.

  I don’t expect the rest of the girls to help out anymore, but Gertie’s absence is a little more worrisome. Ever since the other night in the lodging house, when the girls overheard her talking about the lithograph, she’s kept scarce … distant.

  Some of the girls have been whispering, saying that she must be coming into her magic, but I think it’s shame. It must feel like she’s being punished in the square all over again. I want to help her, pull her out of whatever mood she’s in, but I’m struggling myself.

  Just this morning, I had the feeling that there were a million fire ants crawling on my skin, only to find nothing there. I don’t have a name for what’s happening … I don’t know what to call it … but that still doesn’t mean it’s magic.

  As I near the western edge of the clearing, I feel a heat move through me, like I’m burning from the inside out. Taking off my cloak, I lay it down over a stump and take in a deep breath of cool air. “Whatever this is, it will pass,” I whisper.

  Grabbing the axe, I set my sights on an old pine. As I place my hand against it to steady myself, my fingers begin to tingle. The deep ridges in the rough bark seem to be pulsing with energy. Or maybe the energy is coming from me, but I feel like it’s trying to tell me something.