Chapter 46
I am dragged from what should be my sanctuary back to the cemetery, Simon’s voice rasping in my ear. “It is your fault, you know. You made me do this.”
I thrash, then make myself extra heavy. But I am a landed fish, and Simon is squeezing me so hard from behind, I can scarcely draw breath. I throw back my head, catching him on the mouth, and am satisfied to hear him grunt.
“You had to come back, begging for your answers. Poor little orphan Lucy. No daddy, no mama. Sorry to say, but they would’ve disappointed you.”
White-hot anger blurs my vision. Disappointment would certainly have beaten the lifetime of agonizing absence I was given—all because of him. I let out a raspy scream, but with a violent heave he swings me into the pit.
When I come to, blood salts my tongue and I’m not sure which way is up.
Everything aches. Maybe all my bones have broken.
Maybe all that is left now is for me to close my eyes and finally rest. But my eyes must already be closed, because it is dark.
I am face down in the dirt by the priest’s saturno hat.
I push myself up using a root that juts out about a foot from the bottom. Something is raining down upon me, something powdery and fine, pouring over my legs, my back, my head. I moan, reaching up a hand.
Powder.
I gasp, trying to sit up. The wheelbarrow was filled with lime.
I dare not speak, or the powder will get into my mouth and my saliva will cause a heat reaction.
Don’t cry, don’t weep, don’t even sweat.
A mild, itchy burning has already started up on the damp parts of my neck.
I try to sweep off the powder with my hands, but there’s too much getting in my nose, my ears.
Though it sickens me, I cover my head with the priest’s hat.
What new fresh hell will be next? Will he pour the water directly onto me?
Or will he shovel in the dirt, bury me alive first, decompose my body later?
Can’t plant roses in such a deep ditch. The fire in my ankle has now spread up my leg, but I can’t stay here.
Pushing away the pain, I claw my way up, powder raining down on my arms under my torn sleeves. I will not make it easy for him to bury me. “You sick butcher!”
We all assumed the Welsh hatchet had been part of Shimmelfen’s exotic knife collection. But as a former lumberjack, Simon would have had a hatchet of his own.
Simon heaves a shovel of dirt down onto me.
“If I was sick, it was only… lovesick. I thought Truth was my girl,” he pants.
“I thought she loved me. But then I followed her to that beach. Saw her carrying on with that heathen. It would’ve driven any man to madness.
” His words throb with entitled rage. “I waited until she left.” Sweat dribbles down his forehead into his beard.
“I was even willing to take her back after her betrayal, but she shot me. Tore right through the muscle. I lost everything. Had to find a new profession.”
I make myself as small as possible, head aching. My heart beats so hard in my chest, I think I might have an attack. It will be a more merciful way to die than being buried alive.
“Now, I have set up the hose. Tell me where the treasure is, and I’ll give you a quick death—one stroke.
” Blood smears the priest’s clenched teeth, and his fingers twitch around the handle of the suddenly wicked-looking shovel.
“But if you refuse, I will pour the water, and with the amount of lime I’ve showered on you, your skin will melt away.
And then I’ll bury what’s left while you scream. ”
I gasp, trying not to let the horrible words take shape in my head.
Treasure. That’s why he returned here when he could’ve made a clean escape.
The fake Father Pinnyhorne had always been reckless, a man who believed himself entitled to more than his share.
Perhaps Mr. Sanders had sensed it—snapping at the priest for the harmless act of smoothing the argument with Mr. Tavernish.
Giving Simon the riddle, then, had not been a gift.
It was a test. A way to measure the greed of his so-called clergyman.
I slowly climb to my feet, though my left leg is too painful to put weight on. “You were the one digging holes at the summit.”
Simon’s smile stretches wider. “Thought ‘rotting to its perfect measure’ meant those bread-loaf fungi that grow on the pines. Dug half the hill, but I haven’t found anything yet. So what’s the answer?”
A murrelet screams.
I imagine her still-downy breast, her brown-gray plumage speckled with white, perfectly matched to the fir bark on which she has spent her growing days.
The hidden days. There is nothing remarkable about her, poised on that branch.
But in the moment before she flies, she holds her destiny in her tremulous wings.
She could live in the safety of the branches.
Or take a leap of faith that there is a world beyond her loneliness.
I want to see a palm tree.
“I choose—”
In that split second I shift my weight to my left leg. Ignoring the agony, I step onto the jutting root. The tiny boost is enough for me to grab at the neck of the shovel—
—and miss.
I land heavily back in the pit, saturno flying. But Simon has been knocked off-balance, and a curse fouls the air.
For a moment his shadow relents.
Fly or die trying.
I close my eyes, a weightless feeling winging over me.
Perhaps it is in the falling that she lives most fully.