Bone Gap (11 page)

But now the silvery mist muted all the colors of the grave markers, the uneven ground dancing with strange shadows. The mare stopped, letting them survey the stones, the willow tree dangling its fingers over the rooftops of the two small mausoleums, the dusky grove of poplars beyond.

“Spooky,” murmured Petey.

“Hmmm,” said Finn, who had discovered that if he turned his face a little bit, his lips would brush her hair.

“Look!” breathed Petey, and he glanced up and saw one of
the shadows flickering, gathering scraps of moonlight and cloud to assemble itself into a vague shape that drifted over the tops of the stones.

“Are you seeing this?” Petey said.

“Yes.”

They watched the shape glide through the still air, passing so closely that Petey shivered. The shape slipped out of the cemetery and into the darkness beyond.

“Was that a ghost?” said Petey.

“A cloud, probably. Fog,” said Finn.

“I think it was a ghost.”

“Maybe it's going to Miguel's house. Maybe it's hungry.”

And maybe it was a ghost, maybe it was hungry, but if it was, the mare wasn't troubled. She ambled past the cemetery to the unclaimed land beyond. The field should have had rich green grass springing up around the horse's knees, it should have been wild with bluebells and violets and larkspur, bayberry and lily and clover, but the field burned gold in the thin light of the moon, and Finn wondered why the grass and the flowers seemed to be dying. Surely that was a trick of the eye or the mind or the fact that Petey Willis was warm against him and smelled like a million things you'd want to eat and this was jumbling his thoughts, confusing him, making it hard to pay attention to anything but her.

The mare trotted across the golden field and into a deep still forest, a forest that Finn didn't remember. Crickets whirred and owls hooted and the ground crunched under the horse's feet.
They seemed to be at the mouth of a very long path through the dark wood, a path through a wood that he had never seen before.

“What is this place?” Petey said.

“I don't know.”

And he didn't. But the mare seemed to know, as she seemed to know so, so many things, too many things for a horse to know, and she moved from a walk to a trot, a trot to a gallop. Finn drew his forearms in tighter so that they brushed against Petey's waist. If she thought he was getting too close, she didn't say. She didn't say anything about his lips in her hair, or the fact that his breathing had gone ever so slightly ragged.

And then the trees blurred as the mare ran faster and faster. At first Finn tried to keep an eye on the path in front of him, but it was too dark and the horse was running too fast. He tried to keep his eyes on the moon, but it blazed too hot and too whitely bright, and it etched its image across his vision. He looked around, but what he saw made no sense—trees bleeding into clouds, and the clouds parting for winged lions carved from stone, and the stone lions charging down a staircase made of glass, and the glass shattering into fire.

The mare ran all the way through the forest and out the other side, and suddenly the sounds of the forest were replaced by the crashing of horseshoes on rock. The mare thundered across a flat gray plain that Finn saw too late, too late, was the edge of a mountain, and then the mare was leaping into the air,
and they were falling over the cliff, until they felt the wind catch them, carry them in its soft, dark hand as if the horse and two riders were nothing but a feather that wended its way down the mountainside.

And since none of this could be real, Finn closed his eyes and held on to Petey and wondered if she could feel his heart beating against her back, if she noticed his arms wrapped around her waist, if the moon had etched itself upon her otherworldly eyes, if the moon could ever be full enough to fill them.

Hours later, days or weeks or months later, the mare's hooves again found the ground, and they were no longer falling off a mountain or flying through the forest, they were trotting back across the golden field, through the now pitch-black cemetery, past the Corderos' dozing stone house, and into the beeyard, the only sounds the sounds of Finn's breathing, Petey's breathing, the mare breathing.

When they reached Petey's window, Finn released the reins and slid from the horse's back, knees loose and watery, hands trembling. Petey put her own hands on Finn's shoulders as he helped her down. They stood there in the hushed dark of the yard, struggling for words.

Finally, Petey said, “I'm sorry we didn't find your cat.”

Finn decided not to press his luck, not to do anything but say
Thank you
, say
Good night
, say
Maybe tomorrow
, say
Did you see the fire?
say
Did that just happen?
but when her fingertips traced down his arms to his wrists, when she turned her face up to his,
lips parted, breath sweet, there didn't seem to be anything to say, anything to do, but kiss her.

And so he did.

Somehow, Finn got home, stabled and watered the mare, patted the goat, stumbled into the house. Instead of sitting vigil at the kitchen table, as he had done sixty-whatever gray and troubled nights, he dropped into his bed and careened into sleep, his feet jerking as if he were still riding with Petey through a forest that existed only in dreams. But only a few hours later, thin cries woke him.

Finn threw back the sheets, disoriented. He lurched toward the open window, not sure whose name to call out.

Another sharp cry.

Finn glanced around. Then he dropped to his knees and peeked under the bed.

Calamity.

And six tiny kittens, not much bigger than the mice Calamity was such a calamity at catching.

“It's all right,” he whispered to the squeaking, squirming pile of them, nosing their mother's belly. “I'll look after her, she'll look after you. You'll see.”

He crawled back into bed.
You'll see, you'll see, you'll see.

THE BEAST THAT HAD PREVENTED ROZA FROM ESCAPING
the yard of that horrible suburban house was the largest, ugliest, most miserable dog that Roza had ever seen. His teeth were long and yellow, his tail a spiked lash, his eyes the color of tombs. He growled every time she moved, erupted into furious snarls if she dared walk from one end of the room to the other, barked till he was hoarse if she lingered too long by the doors or windows.

The castle maids and guards kept their distance from Roza and her ferocious new companion. But that night, when the cook asked if she would like some eel pie for dinner, Roza said, “Yes. Thank you very much.”

The cook was so delighted to have someone to cook for, she prepared
two
eel pies. Roza took the dog and the pies to her chambers in the tower, broke the pies into pieces, and offered them to the dog. The dog turned his bloodshot eyes up at her, confused by the offer, by the kindness.

“It's okay,” she said.

He took one bite, gulped, looked up at her again.

“Go on. It's all for you.”

He ate one pie, then the other, and belched contentedly. She sat in a chair by the fire, and the animal laid his head across her ankles and drooled on her bare feet. The darkness came, and he sprawled out at the foot of the huge bed, taking up more than half of it with his mangy, flea-bitten form. And though she might have to have these sheets burned in the morning, and possibly have to bathe in lye herself, it was nice to have a friend.

Because of his matted, reddish coat, Roza decided to call him Rus.

She didn't mind talking to Rus, as the dog didn't gaze upon her with that horrible, indulgent smile, the dog didn't touch her with cold fingers, the dog didn't trace the lace on the bodice of her gown and chuckle when she shivered and jerked away, the dog didn't the dog didn't the dog didn't the dog didn't.

Roza had the cook make eel pies every night. After the dog had devoured them and put his great shaggy head across her ankles or in her lap, she would tell him a story. She would say, “I grew up in a village so small that it didn't have a name.” Or,
“Before the day I boarded the flight to America, I had never been on a plane. Never been so far from home. Never been so close to the sun.”

On the plane, there were other students in the program giggling and turning around in their seats in the rows in front of her, but Roza's eardrums felt like overblown balloons, her heart hammered in her chest, and her tongue was heavy as stone in her mouth. Was she sick? Was she scared? If someone had asked, she wouldn't have been able to answer. All around the plane, the vast blue sky shimmered in the sunlight. Far below, the gray ocean defined the word “forever.” Everything felt both huge and small, as if the plane were hanging from a string held by the hands of gods.

Roza was grateful when they finally landed. On stiff and frozen legs, she followed the other students off the plane and into customs, trying to keep her eye on them as they were split into different lines. Why hadn't she talked to one of these people on the plane? Maybe they knew where they could find their bags. Maybe they knew where the buses were. Maybe they didn't feel so sick or so scared, as if they'd already handed their fates over to someone else without even realizing it.

Her line was slow, and then the customs officer stared at her passport for a long, long time, and at her face even longer. She knew some English, though her accent was heavy. She said, “Yes? Is okay?”

“You're Polish.”

“Yes.”

“You don't look Polish.”

“Sorry?”

“Polish girls are blond.”

She didn't know what to say to that. She bit her lip.

The man smiled in a secret way, as if he had not meant the smile for anyone else, not even for her. He said, “Are you a model?”

Heat crept up her neck into her cheeks. Was he joking? “No, no. I come for study.”

“Who needs school when you could be a model?” He held the flat of his hand over her papers, trapping them there, trapping
her
there. She glanced back at the line of people behind her, but nobody was watching. The last of the other students was disappearing through the doorways in front of her. She wanted to peel back the man's fingers till he yelled. She wanted to punch him. She wanted to cry. But this was a grown man and some sort of official, and she didn't dare say a word. Instead, she waited with her burning cheeks and her own dumb smile until he slid her papers back to her, rough fingertips briefly brushing her wrist.

She grabbed the papers and ran, rubbing her arm on her jeans hard enough to start a fire. But she needn't have worried about losing the other students. They were too boisterous to miss, loitering around one of the baggage carousels, laughing and talking as if they'd known one another for years. Roza scooped her ancient flowered bag off the belt and trailed the students to
a man who held a placard with the name of the university written on it. He gathered them, counted them—there were a dozen from Poland, another dozen from other places in Europe—and took them out the door into the surprisingly wet and chilly May air. He pointed to a waiting bus. Roza dropped into a seat next to a girl wearing a sad puppy expression on her face.

“Isn't it horrible?” said the girl.

“What?”

“This place.”

Roza rubbed her arm where the official had touched her. “I don't think I've been here long enough to decide.”

“I have,” said the girl. Her name was Karolina, her horrible parents had made her come, she'd had to leave her boyfriend behind, she hadn't had lunch, she was starving, it was
cold
, she said, eyes welling, and it was all too horrible for words. Horrible, horrible, horrible.

Roza dug around in her backpack and pulled out a paper bag. She opened the bag and found the babka she'd bought two airports ago in Poland. Not too stale. She offered it to Karolina.

Karolina sniffled and took the bread studded with fruit. “I haven't had this in ages.”

Behind them, the English words rang out, so exaggerated that they managed to make the speaker sound that much more Polish: “Omigod, you're eating
carbs
?”

Karolina dropped the bread into her lap as if she'd just been caught with heroin.

Roza turned around. Behind them, a pretty but brutally skinny girl blinked heavily lined eyes. “What? Carbs will make you fat.”

“She's hungry,” Roza said.

“So?” said the girl.

Roza turned back to Karolina. “You didn't have lunch.”

Karolina shook her head and held the babka out to Roza. “It's okay. You eat it.”

Roza shrugged, took a bite. The girl behind her sang, “Fat!”

Roza thought being fat was better than looking like an angry chicken carcass boiled for angry soup, but said nothing more. Which was lucky, because the brutally skinny chicken carcass turned out to be her new roommate.

Her name was Honorata. Honorata's parents didn't make her come to America, she'd demanded to come. And now that she was here, she had twelve weeks to find a rich boyfriend who would buy her lots of jewelry. If Roza wanted a boyfriend, Honorata said, she better start wearing some makeup. And buy a decent pair of jeans. And get rid of the ratty sweatshirt. And stay out of the sun; she already looked like some kind of Egyptian.

“I like these jeans,” Roza said.

“Don't tell me you're here to study,” said Honorata.

“I am. Botany.”

“Botany? As in
plants
? What are you going to be, a potato farmer?” Honorata threw open their door. “Hey, guys! My roommate wants to be a potato farmer!”

Roza pushed past her into the hallway.

“Where are you going?” Honorata said.

Roza said, “I'm going to see if Karolina wants some potatoes.”

She found Karolina's room, four doors down. Karolina was sitting on her unmade bed, texting her boyfriend, and crying.