Sisters of Sorrow (28 page)

Anna peered through the smog, searching for her tormentor.

“I see you’ve ruined our witch roast, you little bitch,” Abbess McCain said. “I think your murderous mother drowned the wrong child. In fact, she said so herself, your father told me…”

Shadows moved, just beyond the bell tower’s column of water. Anna couldn’t tell how many people were there. More than just McCain. The shadows moved calmly, without rush or alarm. Anna understood that the battle was over.

“Are you aware, Anna, that your father knew who drowned little Ephraim?” McCain continued. “He knew all along that you were innocent. He let you take the blame because he loved your mother,” she paused, “but he never really loved you. He told me so.”

Anna felt Maybelle cowering behind her, wedged between Anna and the pyre. Hattie’s flintlock was in Anna’s hand, she didn’t know how it got there. Anna pulled the hammer back, as Donny had shown her.
This one has a hair trigger
. She aimed toward the approaching shadows and touched the trigger. Its hammer fell with a dead
clack
. Donny had also said,
you only get one shot.

McCain’s shadow became her form as she stepped into the pillar of rain. Two other witch-hunters accompanied her, one on each side. Bright white light surrounded McCain, the lightning blazing through the open bell tower carried down to her along skeins of rain, drawing a shaft of splendid radiance.

Abbess McCain basked in it.

“Look what I have here, Anna.” She hoisted a large, hairy mass. “It’s Joseph’s head. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted Joseph’s head. Imagine my delight when he showed up with not just one head, but two!”

McCain lifted a second hairy mass. Anna saw them clearly now in the sparkling pillar of rain. Neither head snapped. Joseph was completely dead. Anna’s lip curled in a bitter smile.

“Oh, and speaking of heads,” McCain continued, “I made you a promise, Anna, do you remember? I told you I would hang
your
head on my wall. And I believe in keeping promises.”

Dolores’s chant changed. She spoke different words now, and she spoke louder. The smoke had seared her throat, Anna could hear it in her harsh rasp, but Dolores forced the words out, rocking forward and back in the water.

“Perhaps you would be so kind as to ask your witch friend to cast her clever spell on you, so that your head remains alive after I cut it off. I would so
love
to hang a living Anna head in my new office,” McCain laughed, then added, “Of course, I would have to sew your mouth shut. Heaven knows what a pain it is to listen to you talk.”

The room darkened. It took Anna a minute to realize why. The room quieted as well. For the first time in hours, the lightning ceased and the sky silenced. Without the thunder’s agitation, the bell’s incessant single note dwindled.

Other sounds emerged that had been hidden in the thunder’s roar – the splashing of rain, the crackle of the fire, the moans of broken witch-hunters. Anna held her breath. Maybelle grabbed Anna’s hand. Even McCain stopped her taunting.

Then the sky broke. A concussion shook the room, as fierce and bone jarring as the boiler explosion. A rapier of silver sky fire exploded into the top of the tower. The light from the blast filled the tower, flared down the shaft of rain like God’s own search light. The bell wailed, not its single steady note, but a discordant and unmelodious warble, growing louder by the second.

Then they saw it, the bell, plummeting from above the domed ceiling, rocketing downward in the shaft of light, a four-ton cannon ball. It blasted straight through the floor as if the floor had been made of tissue paper rather than stone. A great geyser from the cistern below the floor exploded upward, a column of old rain sheathed inside the new. It hung in the air longer than Anna thought possible, then splashed back down into the gaping hole left by the bell’s passage.

Only after the geyser settled did it occur to Anna that Abbess McCain had been standing in the center of that shaft of light.

Her two remaining goons stood awe-struck. Water ran past their feet, draining into the hole. Anna’s weary mind thought it looked like the world’s largest flush toilet. She giggled, but stopped as soon as she heard herself. To her own ears, it sounded insane.

Large stones fell from the ruined tower, each throwing up huge geysers of their own. The goons, now only shadows in the fog, turned and ran for the double doors. Yet another wave rolled along the outer wall, rushing toward the main entrance. A fleeting desire to warn McCain’s henchmen crossed Anna’s mind. This time when she giggled, she didn’t stop herself.

The wave slammed into the doors, finally destroying the last of the bracing. Water rushed across the floor, sweeping away all in its path. The hole in the floor swallowed much of the wave, along with the two goons. They joined their mistress in the cavernous cisterns below The Saint Frances de Chantal Orphan Asylum.

Anna’s knees gave out. She flopped on her butt beside Dolores. The woman had stopped chanting, she no longer held Anna’s arm. Her eyes were closed and her features relaxed. Lightning resumed in the sky. The storm continued, but its ferocity had diminished.

Waves rolled through the arch where the front entrance had been. They looked like a giant tongue licking out of a stone mouth. After the third wave, the cistern had swallowed all of the sea it could hold.

Pity there’s no one left to clean the pipe
. It was the first thought Anna had had in several minutes.

Stones from the crumbling tower continued to follow the bell into the abyss. Anna wondered how much of the structure would remain when the sun rose tomorrow. It suddenly struck her as fantastical that the sun would ever rise, or that she would be there to see it if it did.

The water had risen nearly to Anna’s chest. It should have been freezing, but it seemed just fine to her. The cartilage in her knees and ankles, the shredded skin on her arms, her pellet peppered back – they had all finally stopped hurting. Her tattered nerves, having fulfilled their sacred duty to report injuries, had at last turned down the lights and called it a night.

A melancholy calm settled over her, contentment. She had gotten almost everything she had wanted, and that was good, good enough. Standing up again seemed like the most ridiculous idea she had ever had, a monumental undertaking. Anna feared that even if she could stand, doing so would reignite her several injuries.

“I would have liked to have run on the beach again,” she said, to no one in particular. “With the sun sparkling off the surf.”

“And the wind in your hair,” Dolores said, her voice like sandpaper.

Anna rolled her head toward Dolores. She said, “Hi,” because she could think of nothing else to say. She was afraid Dolores might try to make her move. “Can I just stay here for a while?”

Dolores smiled a sweet, weary smile. “I’ll let you stay, if you let me stay.”

Ocean water lapped against Anna’s chest. It rose with each new wave that rolled through the doors.

“But,” Dolores said, “I think Maybelle should join the other girls.”

“Is she really here?” Anna asked. She rolled her head the other direction.

Maybelle lay across Donny’s body, her face buried in his chest, sobbing. They were mostly out of the water, part way up the soaking heap of tinder. The ocean had extinguished the fire. The pile smoldered on, but the flames were gone.

“Maybelle,” Anna said.

“I don’t want to leave Donny…” Maybelle whimpered. “Mamma said I have to stay with Donny…”

“Maybelle, I’ll stay with Donny,” Anna said. She tried to use her gentle but firm head girl voice. “Mind me now, Maybelle. You have to do what the head girl tells you, just like I was your mother. Do you remember when they told you that?”

Maybelle looked up at her, a long string of snot dangling from her nose and utter misery pouring from her eyes. Slowly, she nodded.

“Now, I am telling you exactly what your mother would tell you if she were here,” Anna said. “You need to go back to Jane and Lizzy. You found your way here. You can find your way back.”

“And you’re going to stay with Donny?”

“Yes, Maybelle, I promise.”

“Somebody has to hold his hand,” Maybelle said, choking, “‘cause he’s hurt and somebody…”

“I’ll hold his hand, Maybelle.” Anna reached to where Donny lay. Her shoulder screamed and she winced, but once she found his hand and rested her arm against the wet straw, the pain subsided.

“Can she come with me?” Maybelle asked, looking to Dolores.

“I can’t walk right now, honey,” Dolores said, “my feet hurt too bad.”

“Go on Maybelle,” Anna said. “You go as fast as you can, no dawdling now. Mind me.”

“Yes, Miss,” Maybelle said. She slipped off the heap and waded in the direction of the stairway, like a white ghost drifting across the surface of the water.

Anna looked over to Dolores. The witch’s eyes were closed, she breathed peacefully. “You did it, Dolores, you freed Joey.” Anna took her hand under the water and squeezed it. “That was a brave and noble thing.”

Dolores squeezed back.

At the top of the stairs, Maybelle stopped and looked down at them.

“Go on, Maybelle,” Anna called up to her. “Tell Jane that Anna’s swimming in the ocean.” She looked back to Dolores and murmured, “I always wanted to swim in the ocean.”

Dolores whispered, “It’s a fine thing to do.”

Anna closed her eyes, holding Donny by one hand and Dolores by the other, the best two friends she had ever had. The ocean lifted her. And she swam. And it was, indeed, a fine thing.

Anna rose from the dead the following morning, much to her dismay. Intense pain wracked her body. Every limb felt like wood, and her joints were full of gravel. Her throat burned and her lungs ached each time she inhaled. When she tried to open her lips, they stuck together. Her tongue clung to the roof of her mouth.

She wondered if McCain had made good on her threat to sew her mouth closed.
Maybe I’m still dead and she…
But no, McCain was gone, buried beneath the bell and all the stones of the tower that once held it.

Anna pealed her tongue from the roof of her mouth. It came away like the skin from a green banana. She poked at her sealed lips, prying them apart with her tongue. A little cry escaped as her lips parted.

It occurred to her that she was no longer inside the rotunda. The ground beneath her was soft, almost spongy. The air smelled sweet, fir trees and wildflowers.
Summerland
? She squeezed her hands, but they were empty. Knuckles popped. Pain flared along one of the fingers, a souvenir from the mercenary’s revolver.

If this were Summerland, Donny and Dolores would be with me…and it wouldn’t hurt so bad.

Air moved across her face, ocean air. She heard whispering. Anna let her eyes slide open, just a slit. They stung. Crusty bits of matter glued her lashes together. As her lids parted, gentle light seeped in, a blue green blur. As they opened further, the blur resolved into azure patches of sky and verdant sprays of maple leaves and fir boughs.

“Donny?” she said, her throat so dry she expected to exhale dust.

“Shh…He’s right here.” It sounded like Jane, but Anna had never heard Jane speak so gently. Anna’s ears still were not right, one popped when she moved her jaw, the other rang softly. Maybe that explained hearing sweetness in Jane’s voice.

“Where is ‘here’?” Anna croaked.

“We’re in the woods behind Saint Franny’s, the place Donny showed us,” Jane said. “He said you hid here before you came back for us.”

“You came…” Anna’s parched throat seized up.

Someone placed wet fingers on her mouth. Cool water drizzled across her lips. It rolled over her tongue, soothing and hydrating her mouth.

She tried again, “You came back for me?”

“Maybelle told us you killed all the bad guys but you needed help.” This was Lizzy’s voice.

“Actually,” Jane said, “Maybelle told us that Donny needed help. Lizzy, here, insisted we come looking for him.” A snide tinge colored Jane’s voice when she said “Lizzy.” It sounded more like the Jane Anna remembered.

“Yeah, and it’s a good thing we did, too,” Lizzy said. “Y’all were hung up on that big pile of wood, but the water had almost covered it by the time we got there. Then, late last night, the whole place just fell over. Scared the pee out of me.”

“Lizzy!” Jane said.

“Well it did! Anyway, you would have been squished flat if you stayed in there.”

“What about Dolores?” Anna asked.

Jane let out a long, ragged sigh.

“Jane?” Anna asked again, trying to prop herself up on her elbows.

“No, no, Anna, lie down,” Jane said. “Dolores is right here. We brought her out, too.”

Anna relaxed, settling back into a bed of fir boughs. Then realized what she hadn’t asked. She turned her head, crackling her spine as she did, and looked Jane in the eyes. “Is she alive?”

“I don’t know. I think so…I guess,” Jane said. “She’s been catatonic since we found her. Stopped breathing for a while, we thought she died. Sometimes she goes a long time without taking a breath. She’s been shot in the leg. And her feet…” Jane sighed again. “I can’t bring myself to look at her feet, Anna. I almost would think it a mercy if she doesn’t wake up.”

“I tried, Jane,” Anna said, weakly, and closed her eyes.

“Oh, Anna!” Jane sobbed. “It was sheer lunacy for you to believe you could escape that place, let alone bring us all safely out. Never in life would I have believed it.”

Anna opened her eyes and looked at Jane. Tears streamed down the older girls cheeks. Clean pink lines through the grime on her face and her swollen red eyes told Anna Jane had been crying for some time.

Jane sobbed again, looking out toward the ocean. She took Anna’s hand in her own, squeezed it gently. “I promise I’ll never call you Pinky again,” she said, forcing a laugh through her tears.

“I like it when you call me Pinky.” Anna smiled. “I always have. Didn’t you know that?” She did her best to put a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

Jane sobbed a laugh. She looked as if she wanted to say more, hesitated, then brought Anna’s hand to her lips and kissed it.

A moment passed. Then Anna said, “I’d like to see Donny. Can you help me up?”

Jane inhaled sharply. “Uh, I don’t think that’s a good idea right now. Mmm. You need to rest.”

The cold blackness seeped back into Anna’s chest. “Jane, don’t lie to me. Is he here or not.”

“Yes, yes, Anna, he’s right here,” Jane sighed.

“Is he okay?”

Jane was silent long enough for Anna to know the answer. Really, Anna had known the answer already, from the moment Eustace brained him with the ax handle.

“No,” Jane said. “He’s not.”

Anna sat up, shoved Jane’s arm away when the older girl tried to stop her. Her head spun. Black spots clouded her vision. She waited, took three slow breaths. The dizziness passed.

Donny lay next to her on a bed of fir boughs. Maybelle slept snuggled up to his side. Two purple lumps stood out against the pale skin of his forehead. Anna didn’t want to think about the lump on the back of his head. His face had a deathly pallor, like it did on the morning of the sleet storm on the beach, was that two days ago? Anna couldn’t remember. It felt like forever. His mouth hung slightly open, as did his eyes. Dried crusts of blood ringed his nostrils and ears.

Jane wrapped her arm around Anna’s shoulder, being careful of the injury there. Anna allowed Jane to pull her close. The cold blackness in her chest was gone, but nothing took its place. She was just empty.

“Why’d you let him come back?” Anna mumbled. “Why couldn’t he have just…”

“Shh…” Jane said, laying her head against Anna’s.

“He’s not dead,” Lizzy said. “He might get better, you know, if we can get him to a doctor.”

“Lizzy,” Jane said, trying to keep her voice steady. “Go fetch more water.”

Lizzy stood slowly, watching Donny, then wandered off in the direction of the beach.

“You should have just left us there, Jane,” Anna said, slumping into her.

“Oh, Anna, please don’t say that.”

“Just help me over there, beside him.”

Anna rolled onto her hands and knees, then crawled the short distance to Donny. When she reached him, she lay down on the boughs and took his hand.

“I’m sorry, Donny,” she said. “Are you still glad you met me?”

Tears rolled down her cheeks, dripped off the tip of her nose. Donny’s eyes did not blink, his lips did not twitch. His hand remained cold and lifeless in hers.

“I’m glad I met you, Donny,” she said, “very glad I met you.”

She lay there watching him as the dapple of sun and shadow moved across his pale face. Now and then, one of the girls would sneak up to check on her, then tiptoe away. Somebody brought her water once. She slipped in and out of sleep. In her dreams, Donny would wake up, stretch, and ask her why everyone was crying. Or, she would dream of water, constantly dripping somewhere dark and buried, sounds that would echo into eternity yet never be heard.

When the six-foot tall woman in a high-collared white silk dress poked her with a parasol, Anna thought it was just a new dream. Then she heard Jane yell, “Stop that!” in that good old Jane tone of voice that meant someone was about to get clobbered. “Get away from her!”

“What is your name, child?” the woman asked.

Anna’s face was hot and damp, her eyes had crusted over again. She blinked, trying to understand what she saw. The woman wore an ornate white hat. Her hair was black as crow feathers and her eyes were lavender.

“I…My name’s Anna, ma’am.”

The woman smiled, but only with her teeth. “And you are the girl who did that?” She thrust her parasol toward the beach.

Anna sat up and looked toward the beach. Agony in her shoulder confirmed that this was no dream. Ferns and low brush blocked most of her view. She saw only patches of sand and sky. After a moment of craning her head this way and that, she asked, in a sleep-groggy voice, “Did what?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, child, stand up,” the woman said.

“No.” Jane stepped between the woman and Anna. “She’s been shot. She needs a doctor. What is the matter with you?”

“Sarah,” said the woman.

A second woman, an exact twin of the first, stepped into Anna’s view. She took Jane by the shoulder and whispered something into her ear. Jane’s face went blank. She turned and walked a few paces away, then sat down hard on the forest floor.

The first woman offered Anna her hand. “Stand up, if you would please.”

Anna took her hand and rose. Her knee popped. The ground seemed to tilt under her feet, like a listing ship. The dizziness rushed back over her, filling her head with prickles and her eyes with black spots. Her stomach lurched. She realized that she was falling over, felt as if she sailed downward, like the plummeting bell.

Strong hands grabbed her by the arms and held her up. Whoever had grabbed her must be holding her in the air, she could not feel her feet touch the ground at all. After several breaths, feeling returned. The prickly sensation, like a sleeping leg waking, rushed through her head. The wobbly ground settled. Strength returned to her feet, at least enough to stand up by.

The woman looked at her impatiently, her hands clasped at her waist. It must be the other one, Sarah, who held her up.

“That!” the woman said, “Are you the Anna who did
that
?” She pointed through the trees, across an open field, to an enormous pile of old stones, the ruins of some ancient fortress.

Part of Anna knew immediately that it was the remains of The Saint Frances de Chantal Orphan Asylum. Yet, most of her mind didn’t recognize it at all. The waves had carried an entire coastline of sand up onto the plain upon which the orphanage had stood. Black stones jutted out of the sand like teeth from a discarded jawbone.

Half the rotunda still stood, where it connected to the dormitory wing. One side of the grand staircase swept up its concave wall, reaching into clear blue sky. Two triangular stubs of wall from the dormitory wing supported the curved wall like buttresses. Sand had completely filled the hole in the floor. Anna did not recognize any other feature of what had once been her home.

“Good Lord, child. I haven’t got all day,” the woman said.

“Uh, I blew up the factory,” Anna said. “I didn’t make the storm, though…”

“Of course not,” the woman said, “but you helped Dolores, yes? And you let Joseph into the fortress, yes?”

Anna nodded her head to both questions.

“Very well. I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Matilda. This is Sarah. We have come to collect our sister.” Matilda nodded toward Dolores. “We will be out of your hair shortly. But first, I need a little bit more information regarding last night’s events.”

“You are from Dolores’s coven?” Anna asked.

“No. We are from her
mother’s
coven. Dolores has never been one of us. She was disallowed for weaving magic she had no business knowing,” Matilda said. “However, she was given a second chance, an opportunity to right her wrongs, and it seems she may have done so. I told her we would come for her once Joseph’s soul had been released.”

Anna started to sag again, the dizziness returning. “Ma’am, I don’t think I can stand any longer.”

“Sarah,” Matilda said.

One of the hands holding her released. The other hand continued to support her without wavering. The woman holding her, Sarah, tugged at the flap of dress covering Anna’s shoulder. Then, she gave it a firm yank, ripping the dress all the way down Anna’s back.

Something sharp pricked into her skin, just under her shoulder blade, a bright, precise pain. As soon as she began to react, a bit of lead popped out of her back. The relief was so palpable that Anna couldn’t wait for Sarah to start on the next piece.

In a moment, Sarah had removed all the pellets. Again, the pinprick pain returned as she stitched little X’s over each wound, seven in all. The thread slid under her skin. It made her teeth grind, but was in no way as horrible as the mercenary’s calloused thumb digging in the punctures.

Sarah finished by sewing three stitches across the ripped dress so it hung, more or less, as it should. It wasn’t until she finished that Anna noted she had done it all one handed, and with no instruments.

Anna started to ask how she had managed it, but before she could, Matilda said, “Drink this,” handing her a small vile. Anna did, without question. It tasted like a mix of strawberries and copper.

“Now, that should keep you on your feet until our business is concluded,” Matilda said.

“Thank you,” Anna said. The copper strawberry syrup felt like lead in her stomach, but the dizziness faded and her energy was returning.

“You are welcome. Now I will need you to come back to the ruins with me, for just a moment, and explain how all this came about.”

“Okay,” Anna said, then, “No. Wait a minute.” Walking back to the ruins felt…easy, reasonable. But wasn’t there something important here. She tried to remember. Her thoughts in that direction oozed, like syrup. “Can you help…” What’s his name? “Donny. Can you help Donny?” then, “You need to help Donny. I can’t leave him.”

“The boy?” Matilda said, either shocked or amused, as if Anna was joking. Then she saw Anna’s reaction and said flatly, “No. We cannot help the boy.”