Chapter Sixty Frankie
SIXTY FRANKIE
It was well before dawn when I crept out of bed, laced up my uncle’s sturdiest leather boots, and pulled on my wool coat and hat.
I knew I should wake Pearl to say good-bye, that she would be furious that I had sneaked off like this, but I couldn’t bear the thought of it. I didn’t trust myself to still leave if Pearl clung to me, cried, begged me not to go.
I knew it was a weak and cowardly thing, to skulk off like this.
The truth was, I didn’t want to leave at all. It felt all wrong.
But leaving was the only way to get help.
And I was the only one to do it.
I wrote a quick note and left it on the kitchen table:
I will be back in less than a week.
Stay inside.
Open the door for no one.
I love you.
Now and always.
F
I gave Aife a pat on the head. “Take care of her, girl,” I said, then shouldered the knapsack, slipped out the front door, locking it behind me, and set out on foot, making my way by moonlight. It had snowed again in the night: four fluffy inches of fresh powder sparkled on the ground.
I walked down Main Street, past Pearl’s house, past the St. James farm. I could make out the remains of the ruined barn, smell the charred timbers. I found the path into the woods, the shortcut over the pass that would lead me to Amsterdale.
I followed the same path my aunt and Pearl had taken when they’d escaped. But Pearl had come back. And I had shot her. Over and over, I played the scene in my head: felt the gun going off, saw Pearl lying there, bleeding.
What if she had died?
What if I had killed her?
I heard Pearl’s voice talking back to me: But you didn’t. And personally, I think I’m going to have a rather fetching scar.
The moon was still nearly full as I walked, thinking, remembering.
The sun was as yet just a dull glow behind the mountains in the east. The moon hung low in the sky, bright enough to see by as I picked my way through the trees on the path, moving uphill.
The snow was soft, feathery, making my footsteps soundless.
And that was why I didn’t hear the footsteps behind me.
I was struck from behind, hard in the back, right between my shoulder blades.
Wing bones, Pearl had called them when she ran her fingers down my naked back.
Scapulae, I’d insisted, during those afternoons, those long beautiful afternoons when we’d lie together in the old Ayers place, our secret house. And then it was my turn to run my fingertips over Pearl’s body, naming all its parts.
The pain was fierce, like a fire through my chest. I looked down, saw the tip of a blade protruding from the front of my chest, just to the left of my sternum, poking out of my wool coat.
I reached for it, cutting the palm of my right hand. I fell to my knees, the fresh snow soft as down.
I lay back, my eyes closed, and remembered falling on the couch at the Ayers house with Pearl, pulling her down on top of me.
“Did you know the human hand has twenty-seven bones?” I’d asked Pearl, and she had only laughed, kissed me.
I opened my eyes as I lay there in the snow, not on the couch. I blinked up at an impossible sight:
A man in a long patchwork coat, a horse skull where his face should be.
“No,” I said, the last word I would ever utter, which struck me as a terrible final word.
The beast shook its head, so that the skull mask shifted, slipped down a little.
The moon was bright, so bright that I could see the neat raised white scar on his forehead, a scar from seventeen carefully done sutures.