Sisters of Sorrow (8 page)

She ran like a girl caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, her heavy wet shoes slapping the sand. She hugged the waterline, running as close to the surf as she could. The white lines of foam, all that were visible in the dark, served as her guides. She had seen that no stones or logs littered this stretch of beach, so she dashed blindly toward the forest. Behind her, Abbess McCain ranted on into the night

Never in her life had Anna run like this. Her hair flew in the wind. The wind sang in her ears. She was flying. Her feet slapped the wet sand, but she didn’t feel them at all. Nor did she feel her legs, they ran of their own will. The air tasted like it had when she was only a toddler. She remembered a park of green grass and flowers and honeybees. She remembered the swing in the park where her daddy would push her so high.

Tears streamed from both eyes and she relished the way their tracks stung in the icy wind. Her lungs burned, and she relished that as well. Every breath that burned them was
free
air.
I’m coming alive again
, she thought as she flew.

It seemed to take an eternity to reach the trees, but when she did, she barely remembered how she got there. High grass stood between the beach and the wood line. By the time she reached it, her eyes had adjusted to the dark enough for her to see the grass and pick her way through it. Once inside the woods, Anna stopped running and sagged against a tree, panting.

Abbess McCain’s voice carried on the night air. She still bellowed, but now her shouts were commands directed at the sisters. Anna couldn’t make out the words, but she could guess. Abbess McCain was organizing the search.

Anna looked back to the tower and the pillar of smoke rising from the factory. Dots of light appeared, lanterns or torches. She looked across the gentle curve of the waterline, and that made her smile. The tide was still rising. The first tracks she made on the beach had already washed away. Her last tracks would be underwater long before the sisters could find them.

She turned to the forest. Even with her night-adjusted eyes, she could see nothing. Only a fool would linger here in the open, but blundering through the woods in the dark didn’t seem wise either. What had Joseph said to do next?

Keep your back to the tower and the sea within earshot. Work into the forest. Find a crevice or a cavern, somewhere to hide when the moon rises.

Anna ventured into the woods. She walked as the blind walk, groping from tree to tree. The ground was spongy and uneven. Ferns sprung from the forest floor like giant feather dusters, taller than Anna’s shoulders. The massive firs and gangly, smooth-barked madronas creaked in the night breeze. Low creeper vines and fallen tree limbs snagged her ankles, but she pushed deeper into the forest.

A few hundred feet beyond the tree line, the ground rose in a low cliff. The rise was only five or six feet high, but it was undercut, forming little caves and overhangs all along its length. A large fir, which once stood atop this bluff, had recently fallen. It now lay at an angle over the cliff face. Anna crawled under its still-green boughs, into the dirt crevice that opened behind it. She wedged herself into the fissure, working her way deeper into the crack until the dirt above her pressed down on her back.

She recited Joseph’s instructions. Her lips moved with the words, but she spoke them only inside her head.

Slow your breathing. Still your heart. Wedge deep into the crevice. Cover your lair with fir boughs and pillow your head with lush moss. Do not mind the centipedes or the ants. This is their home. You are their overnight guest. Be soundless as the spider tiptoeing across your cheek. Learn her secret of stealth.

Wait. Breathe. Think. Rest, but do not sleep. Watch the horizon through the cedars and ferns. Watch for the glow of dawn.

And so, she did. Nestled in her hole, Anna waited. The moon rose, full and bright. She could see, through the curtain of dangling roots and the boughs of the fallen tree, moonlight frosting the edge of the wood line. The upper limbs of the trees glowed with silver light. She couldn’t see the ocean, but she heard its comforting hush. Night birds called and coyotes yipped.

Then, she heard something else. Two separate sounds, both equally unsettling. In the distance, but closer than she would have liked, voices called, whistles chirped. Abbess McCain’s search parties had begun in earnest. Much closer, a twig snapped, and hot breath rasped in a raw throat.

She held her breath, strained her ears, remembering Sister Eustace’s words
, the wolves would have eaten you…the wolves or something worse.
And, hadn’t Sister Elizabeth told her that something lived down in the drainage pipe? Something that would eat her if the grate was open?

Anna wanted to believe that the sisters had just been toying with her, torturing her emotions. But, something big moved in the trees, picking its way through the underbrush. The thing that moved in the darkness tried to walk quietly, but seemed too eager, too intent on its purpose. Anna tracked its progress by the rustle and crunch of its feet.

The beast came from the beach, directly ahead of her. It wasn’t following her trail, she had come to this place on an angle from the beach.
Maybe it is following my scent
.

Anna felt as if she were being choked. Her heart pounded. Her head pounded. She couldn’t breathe.

Then, she remembered that she was holding her breath. Opening her mouth, she slowly, silently let the old air out and drew in new.

She no longer heard the thing in the woods. It had stopped. Was it listening for her? Smelling for her?

The other sound came again, sisters calling into the woods, calling to each other. Anna closed her eyes, taking slow, slow breaths, willing herself out of existence, willing herself to be a stone or a log, a lump of clay, just a cold and uninteresting strand in the fabric of the island.

A snatch of something very old came to her,
they will pray for the rocks and the hills to cover them.
Anna prayed that prayer.

One of the search parties stood on the beach at the edge of the woods. They spoke in whispers, Anna couldn’t make out the words, but she could tell they were very close. There were three or four of them, and they seemed to be arguing. Agitation, desperation, fatigue colored their whispers, but also a sense of excitement.

They can’t have found me,
Anna insisted
. I did what Joseph said. I did exactly what he said. They
can’t
have found me. I am a rock. I am a log. I am a lump of clay.

A whistle sounded on the beach, two short bleats. They were close enough that Jane, if she were here, could have thrown a shoe and hit them.
She probably would, too,
Anna thought.
That whistle was calling for additional sisters. I might as well fight them now, while there is only a few.

But she held her place.
There is no way they can know I’m here, I am a rock, I am a log…

The whispering intensified, more sisters voiced opinions, the tone of excitement prevailed. Then, the crashing commenced. The search party left the beach and began breaking through the underbrush and ferns, advancing into the trees. Anna could no longer hear the stealthy thing that had been creeping toward her. Had it slunk off into the deeper forest when the sisters arrived? She began wishing that it had found her rather than the sisters.

The yellow glow of oil lamps replaced the silver moonlight on the boughs beyond Anna’s nook. The sisters’ tromping feet sounded like the boots of marching soldiers. Their advance was slow but unrelenting.

As they came within a few yards of Anna’s hole, the woods exploded with sound. Something crashed through bushes and ferns. Branches snapped. Throats screamed. Clothes ripped. For one glorious second, Anna imagined the beast which had been stalking her had turned its fury on the sisters. Then, as the screaming crescendoed, she realized the truth. The stealthy thing wasn’t a beast but a boy, just another refugee from Saint Frances. He had left tracks on the beach and the sisters followed him here.

They dragged him through the vines and ferns to the beach, lashing and kicking him as they went. He screamed and thrashed, landing one good kick. A sister cried out in pain. But there were at least six of them by now and his efforts only enraged them further. The nuns were in a fever frenzy, acting out their rage, a gang of unhinged and hysterical women.

Pagan Carnival
, Anna thought again.
They are afraid. They have lost control and their world is spinning all catawampus.

The sisters continued beating on the boy. The sounds carried to Anna from the beach. They beat him until he stopped screaming. They beat him until he stopped moaning. After he stopped breathing, they quit.

All was quiet for a moment. The birds and coyotes had stilled. Waves rolled their soft rush upon the sand.

Eventually, one of the sisters said, “Should we leave him here?”

“No, better bring ‘im wit’ us,” another said, “we’ll say we found ‘im like that, in the rocks and surf.” The others made sounds of agreement. They trudged back down the beach, dragging the boy behind them.

I am a rock. I am a log. I am…
Anna’s whole body shuddered. Her mouth peeled open involuntarily in a silent wail. She curled into a ball. Uncontrollable sobbing wracked her small frame. She mashed her face into the dirt to stifle her weeping.
You did this
and
it’s all my fault
and
I didn’t mean it,
chased each other around and around and around inside her head.

She cried like that until her lungs and jaw and throat ached, until mud covered her face from the tears and slobber, until she was just too tired to cry any more. Then, she nearly
was
a lump of clay, staring catatonically at the silver frosted boughs of a dead fir tree.

The moon had moved, its light finding different branches now than when it first rose. Little bugs, and one big spider, crawled over her skin, interested, but not very, in their visitor.
I used to be afraid of spiders
, drifted through Anna’s head. She realized it was the first thought she’d had in a very long time, probably over an hour.

Anna had felt like this before, sometimes for months. This was how one survives Saint Frances. Don’t think, don’t feel, just do the next thing that must be done. Anna had done the next thing that must be done for five years. She never wanted to do it again. Lying there, under the roots of the forest, she remembered the feeling of running on the beach,
flying
on the beach, flying on the swing in the park with the flowers and the honeybees and her mom and her dad and having no next thing that must be done.

She could do the next thing, for just a little bit longer. She
would
do it, to be free. And if it killed her, well,
when I’m dead, there’s nothing else they can take away
. And, that is its own kind of freedom.
What does it matter now
?

The next thing, according to Joseph, was to watch for the first light of dawn
. As soon as pink haze cuts the top of the sea from the bottom of the sky, move. Don’t walk on the beach or trample a new path. Stick to the deer trails and rabbit trails. Keep the tower to your back and the sea within earshot.

As the stars faded, Anna felt an uneasy restlessness. It dawned on her that it must be nearly six o’clock, time to rouse the little ones. Time to trade insults with Jane and slap Lizzy for one of her boneheaded insolent remarks. Anna felt her chest tighten, felt like she might fall apart again. But she didn’t. She was all out of tears and sobs and emotions of any kind at all for now.

The girls will be safe
, she decided. When the other voice in her head tried to tell her how ludicrous that was, she silenced it.
They will be fine. And that is all we will hear of that.

Sister Dolores had promised to keep them out of trouble. Anna hoped the witch still felt compelled to honor her promise. She hoped Sister Dolores was still alive, for that matter. But, the subject was closed for now. Anna saw the pink line at the bottom of the sky. She moved.

Anna hurried along deer trails just inside the wood line. A bank of thick fog had settled over the island. Enough light filtered through the fog for Anna to see a few steps ahead of her, but nothing farther. Massive tree trunks disappeared into the mist above her. Her path wound and turned, sometimes inland, sometimes toward the sea. Joseph had told her to find a rusted windmill to the south, she had to maintain her southward course.

Keep the tower to your back and the sea within earshot.

Well
, she thought,
I cannot see the tower through the fog, and the sea is very quiet this morning.
A few times, the path curved too far inland, or emptied onto the sandy beach. When this happened, Anna had to retrace her steps until she found a branch of the trail that paralleled the sea more closely.

In the thick fog, the ocean sounded muffled and dreamlike. Seagulls cried and cackled. Other birds, Anna did not know their names, squawked and croaked and cooed and made all sorts of odd noises.
There must be hundreds of them
. Countless voices came to her out of the fog, sounding like human speech or laughter or screams, all nearby, all unseen.

Anna felt as if things moved in the woods around her. Her eyes fought with the fog and dusky light, trying to make sense of the shadows she passed in the mist. The bird chatter may have masked stealthier sounds. The birds, themselves, seemed to be talking about her. A low murmur, a conspiratorial crooning, lay below their louder babble.

As long as it’s not the sisters,
she told herself, pushing farther and farther south.

The day brightened, and as it did, the fog thinned. Anna pulled the loaf of bread out of her pocket. Seawater had dampened it when she hid by the boat and she had smashed it flat when she hid under the cliff. It tasted more like a soggy cracker than bread, but Anna was too hungry to care.

She guessed she had been walking for two or three hours when the fog finally lifted. The sun shone brightly and the day warmed. She no longer felt followed or gossiped about by the island’s animals. Every few minutes, the ocean would sparkle through gaps in the trees, and it was beautiful. She actually started to feel… good.

Anna inhaled deeply. The air was full of smells – the rich, damp earth, the sweet wild flowers, the tang of fir sap, and the sea. There was no odor of coal smoke or leather or fish stew. She smiled, pulling a potato from her pocket. It was raw, but she had eaten many half-raw potatoes at Saint Frances
. I’ll just pretend it’s an apple.
She brought it to her lips. Then something moved.

It wasn’t her imagination. Something moved quickly through the brush. Anna stopped. She squatted down, trying to be as small as possible. The trail was wide here and there was very little underbrush, nowhere to hide. The moving thing, whatever it was, wasn’t a person. Anna could tell by its quick, discreet steps.

It passed by her, just a few feet off the trail, then trotted out onto the path a stone’s throw ahead of her. A scruffy looking dog with sharp ears and snout. It stopped and looked back at her.
Not a dog
, she thought,
a coyote.

The coyote held a large chunk of meat in its mouth. At first, Anna thought it looked like a pale, thin ham. Then she saw the shoe. The coyote turned and loped away down the path, carrying a nun’s lower leg in its mouth.

Anna decided not to eat the potato. She didn’t feel good anymore.

The woods darkened as a cloud passed over the sun. Anna waited, dropping the potato back into her pocket. The coyote had taken her southbound trail. She wanted to give him plenty of space before following.

She wondered about the sisters. What were they doing now? Last night, at the height of the chaos, they had swarmed the beach and combed the ground around Saint Frances. Then, shortly before dawn, their whistles and calls had ceased. If they had been out this morning, the screech and squabble of the sea birds would have covered the sister’s whistles. But now, the birds had quieted. Anna thought she might have heard the sisters once or twice, but if it
was
them, they were far away.

Anna stood and walked south again. The woods and sea remained as charming as they had been earlier, but Anna reminded herself that it was a very dangerous beauty. She would not be safe until she found Joseph.

Her thoughts turned to Joseph and his instructions, then to Abbess McCain and the other sisters.
What are they doing?
As she walked, she tried to piece together the events of the previous night. She knew what
she
had done, but she tried to envision what the sisters saw and how they would have responded.

The boiler had exploded, taking out most of the factory and a large portion of the sister’s living quarters. But apparently, many of the sisters were not in their quarters at the time of the explosion. If they had been, they would have all been killed. But they had been out, looking for her. Why? How had they known she escaped? Sister Dolores had promised to cover for her, had the witch been discovered? Had she ratted Anna out? Had Sister Dolores been killed in the explosion?

That thought put a rock in Anna’s stomach. She decided to think of something else. The fire. Joseph had told her there would be a fire, he had known. He had also known that the fire would go out. His plan had worked perfectly. The fire’s sudden death had given Anna a window of darkness through which she escaped.

What had extinguished the fire? A blaze that intense would take hours to extinguish. It would have taken all the water in the cisterns… Then she got it. The cisterns lay below the factory. The fire, in its intensity, had burned through the floor supports, causing the whole factory to plunge into the cistern.

Joseph had known it would happen. He had also known where the tide would be when the boiler blew and where it would be when the fire died. He had known that if she ran along the waterline, the tide would cover her tracks before the sisters found them. He had known that the moon would not rise until she had found a safe place to hide. He had known that they would stop searching for her as dawn approached.

Why had they stopped searching?
If I was Abbess McCain
, Anna thought. She reflected on what she had seen, the inferno that looked like the gaping maw of hell and Abbess McCain’s empty black silhouette standing on the rock, waving her arms and ranting.
If I was Abbess McCain and completely insane with anger
, she revised,
what would I do?

Then she understood. Rage and frenzy had fueled their search last night. They had run themselves ragged until they tired and calmed enough to think. This was an island, after all. They didn’t need to find her tonight. She wasn’t going to get very far. The sisters had decided to regroup, probably eat breakfast, tend to their wounded, and organize a planned, systematic search.

Joseph had known that they would do that, too. He had foreseen the lull in the nun storm
. He must have been planning this for months,
she thought. The timing of the tide and the moonrise had been perfect. Anna wondered if Joseph had intentionally clogged the overflow pipe in order to meet her there.
How did he know that they would send
me
down there?
she wondered
, or did it matter that it was me? Was he just looking for any child willing to blow the boiler?

That thought stopped her in her tracks. She rested against a crumbling tree stump.
Did Joseph trick me into killing all those sisters? Was that his real purpose, to blow up Saint Frances, and I was just the rube that helped him do it?
She thought of all the barred doors, the high, narrow windows, the grate covering the drainage pipe and the peephole in the drainage chamber door. The sisters had definitely been trying to keep
something
out.

But, he knew who I am. He knew my name and he told me to be sure to bring my finger,
she thought
. Besides, why would he devise a plan for my escape from the beach if all he wanted was to kill the sisters?

She started walking again. Ahead of her, the trees thinned, as if there may be a clearing. She decided that Joseph had wanted
her,
specifically, and had intended for her to escape, but he must have known how deadly his plan was.
If he kills so easily, can I trust him?

The other voice in her mind said,
they’re just sisters.

That still doesn’t make it right! I’m not a murderer.

What about your little brother?

She didn’t want to think about that, but it reminded her of what Sister Dolores had said. Sister Dolores had come to Saint Frances to kill her own little brother, Joey, Joseph. Had she known what he was going to do? Had she known that Anna was helping him?

What does it matter now?
Everyone else was behind her. Only Joseph waited ahead. He had freed her from Abbess McCain and Saint Frances. No one else had ever done her such a kindness. Whatever he may be to the rest of the world, to her he was a friend.
They may call him a murderer, but they called me a murderer, too.
That’s why they had sent her to this island in the first place.
Murder to get in, murder to get out
. She smiled her wry smile.
They’re just sisters.

She decided she could live with that, if she had to, though the thought rubbed against her conscience the way the key had worn blisters on her sole. She had several other things to consider. The effect of her actions on the other children, for one. The fact that she really had no idea how her brother had ended up drowned in the bathtub, for another. But, those musings would have to wait. To the north, from the beach, came the shrill voice of a whistle.