The Children(8)

T-he, The. The Per, Pearls. Perils? The Perils—

She shook her head and dropped it back onto the stack.

In another chest was a jumble of boots, and lain over the top a pair of women’s gloves, folded. Guinevere squinted at the left one, picked it up, and stuck her hand in as far as it would go. Not far. The glove had no ring finger, just a smooth gap beside the pinkie. Her third finger folded beneath it like a wing. She admired the effect for a moment, then peeled off the glove and tossed it back.

The boots must’ve been put away muddy, long ago. The mud had dried and fallen into a sediment layer over the chest’s bottom. Adrift in the dirt was a rattling box of shotgun shells, red and gold like little Christmas crackers. She picked one up, touched her tongue to its end to feel the charge. Violence. Trapped like a djinn in metal casing.

When they lifted the lid of the final chest, it was full of old bedding. The scent it released—startling, unmistakable—was the exact odor of a Venetian cathedral.

With it came a full-color memory, catching her hard at the scruff: the bench that numbed her bottom, a ceiling so high it held sky inside it. Murmurous Italian running like an open tap, and a man in stitched robes walking by trailing this very scent.

Nanny whispered the word in her ear. Incensario. A little metal pineapple full of God’s cologne.

Guinevere pressed her cheek to plaque-colored cotton and stuck her arms down either side, feeling around until her fingers met something solid. Ennis helped her pull it out: a hard-sided leather purse with a seashell clasp, reeking of frankincense.

Inside the purse was a hand. Distinctly feminine in shape, carved from a wood so pale it had the translucent glow of a salt lamp. Guinevere loved it on sight.

“Lemme see,” Ennis said, and she gave it over reluctantly. It was a little larger than their own hands, though smaller than that of a grown-up woman’s. The base of the wrist had a rough texture where it must’ve snapped off a larger figure.

“Weird,” he murmured, turning it over, then brightened. “Let’s bury it.”

“Why?” She snatched it back, clasping it to her chest. “I love it.”

He made a face like, Your funeral.

All day they’d heard the movements of the caretaker, his boots making slow knocks over the floor. Now something under the house’s skin ticked, an unmistakable waking sound, and the lights turned on. Guinevere hadn’t noticed the bulbs spaced around the room until their filaments went fiery. They drove the shadows into the corners and flattened the twilit squares of window.

She blinked, vision veined with afterglow. “He fixed it!”

Together they looked out at the deep blue world. Grass and the spindly heads of a little orchard, not apple trees but peach. Beyond that, the woods. She imagined herself in a crow’s nest atop the highest oak, peering down her rifle at pirates scurrying through the underbrush. Bang.

The caretaker stepped into sight far below, crossing the grass with his red dog.

“Come on,” Ennis said.

They ran from the house’s crown to its foot and out into the evening. It was the tricky clear-sky cold of late spring. The sky was deepening to navy, with flashes in it that would become stars. She thought they’d have to run to catch up with the man, but he was standing at the orchard’s edge, waiting.

He had a funny face. Long eyes, wide mouth, freckles like flecks of wet paint someone had smeared. He smiled at them and his mouth grew wider. Guinevere wasn’t sure whether she liked him or not.

“Evening, explorers,” he said. “Find anything interesting?”

“Books,” Guinevere said, while Ennis said, “Bullets.”

“The bare necessities.” The man’s eyes creased hard at the corners. Even up close she couldn’t decide how old he was. The question felt too slippery for something so simple.

Ennis crouched in front of the dog and held out his hand. “What’s your dog’s name?”

“Ask her,” the man replied.

Ennis looked up, scowling. He hated to be teased. Guinevere minded it less and wasn’t entirely sure the dog couldn’t speak. Just in case, she knelt politely and said, “What’s your name?”

The dog was so pretty, fur hanging around her face like the parted hair of a French singer. Though she looked intelligent enough to speak, she said nothing.

“You’re making fun of us,” Guinevere said reproachfully, rising. “Now we won’t tell you our names.”

“Too late. I got ’em off your dad.” The man tipped his head and narrowed his eyes, the way Edith did when she lit a cigarette. “How long you planning to stay?”

“Forever,” Guinevere said. Ennis elbowed her in the ribs.

“No, we’re not. It’s a vacation house. It belongs to our grandpa.” He didn’t mention they’d never met this grandpa. “Nobody’s stayed here for years and years.”

The man pursed his wide mouth. The effect was unsettling: a long red caterpillar drawing itself into a ball. “Really? Nobody at all?”

The children looked narrowly at each other. He wanted them to ask, Why did you say it like that? A moment passed, and Guinevere sighed. “Why’d you say it like that?”

The beautiful dog made a sound in her throat. Not a growl, exactly. The man put a hand on her head. The skin around his eyes was whiter in the creases, a spray of pale lines you could see when he stopped smiling.