“I know something happened between you two,” I say. “But you’re the only one he listens to.”
“No, not anymore.” She pushes herself up, the sheet falling away from her shoulders, and I can see that her feet are still caked in dirt, the blood now dried against her leg. Her bed linens will need to be scrubbed several times to get them clean. “And if they’re sick, the ritual might heal them.”
“Or it might not,” I say.
“In which case, it’s too late anyway.” My sister looks at me with a vacantness I’ve never seen in her before, tears staining her cheekbones. Instinctively, my eyes settle on her stomach, but there is still no definition beneath the thin cotton of her dress. “We can’t save them,” Bee says, reaching out and taking my hand. Her skin is soft and uncalloused. Fingernails closely trimmed.
“What about you?” I say. “What if we need to save you?”
She smiles, a tiny curve at the corner of her mouth. “I’ll save myself.”
I lie down beside her, forming myself into a shell, our knees touching. If my sister is sick, if the rot is working its way through her, then I am sick too. Made of the same flesh. Born of the same blood. We haven’t always been close, we haven’t always understood one another, but if she dies, perhaps I want to die as well. Perhaps there is no life that makes sense without her: my little sister who has always reminded me of the night sky, endless and beautiful and chaotic. My sister the universe. My sister the anomaly. My sister who is blind, yet now, looking at her, her pupils seem to focus, to dilate, as if some part of her can see the form I make in the bed beside her.
“What if I am not who I thought I was?” she says after a long, sleepy silence, listening to the rain stream down the windows, pouring over the roof as if it’s looking for a way in, a way to infect those who hide inside.
“What do you mean?”
Her eyes flutter closed again. Her mouth goes slack. “I’m just tired,” she says softly, her fingers burrowing beneath the blankets, drawing them up to her chest. “Will you put on a record?”
I slide from the bed and pull a record from the top of the stack, slipping it free from its sleeve, then place it on the player, turning the small hand-crank until the record begins to spin. I keep the volume low then climb back into bed.
Bee falls asleep, and I brush her hair away from her cheekbone. My little sister the universe. I feel her forehead for fever, for any sign of the pox, but she is cool to the touch.
We sleep side by side, just like when we were little, listening to the scratch of slow, sad songs. We are two tiny figures in a big-girl bed, and her breathing comforts me, the low, sputtering exhale. Her eyelids flutter for a time before they fall still, and I’m afraid of tomorrow, afraid for Ash and Turk.
What we’ve built here suddenly terrifies me.
THEO
The gathering begins just after sunrise.
Two holes have already been dug beneath the Mabon tree at the center of the circle. They aren’t trenches, long and wide to fit a coffin. Instead, they are only three feet wide and about five feet deep. They are actual holes. As if we mean to plant a tree in them.
But instead, we will drop two men inside.
From my pocket, I retrieve the folded notebook page I found behind the wallpaper, and hand it to my wife seated beside me. She arrived late to the gathering, appearing cautiously from the path, her arms folded, before she spotted me and came to sit on the bench to my left. I thought she might not come at all, but stay in Bee’s room, sisters comforted by the presence of the other. But now she sits with her shoulders tensed, come to see what will happened to Ash and Turk.
“What is it?” she asks, holding the folded paper, but I only give her a tight nod.
She senses its furtive nature, and her eyes glance around the group to be sure no one is close enough to see before she unfolds the creased edges. She reads the words quickly, keeping her head bent low, then refolds it again, clamping her palm around the little square. “Where did you find it?”
“Tucked in the wallpaper, above the bed in the sunroom.”
“Were there others?”
“No. The notebook is missing more pages, but they weren’t in the wall with this one.”
She hands the folded square back to me. “We need to find the rest,” she says, swift but quiet. “They must be somewhere in the house.”
A sudden and abrupt hush settles over the group, and those who had been standing, milling about, make their way to benches, crowding in around us. I turn to see Levi striding up the center row toward the stage, his eyes cast to his feet.