Chapter Seven October Twenty-Ninth
Eagle Arch (unincorporated), Alaska
I got the job. He’ll pay for my tickets; I just have to tell him the train, plane, or airline.
Lesha messaged me. He called, this Mr. Artie Taylor, and he was very nice, and she lied, which I didn’t ask her to do, and now he thinks I’m a super babysitter...
Lesha pointed out something else, too, when I told her my family was keeping all of my records from me, or that I didn’t have them.
I had to have something on file with the university to attend and qualify for free tuition. I could find out, I could look at my account—if I knew the password Barton used when he set it up.
“I’m going to the store.”
Sarah’s voice is outside my door, and I move quickly, quickly enough to notice the bags by the door. Not shopping bags. Suitcases.
“Sarah. I’m leaving, too,” I say. I walk slowly towards her. Sarah used to seem much more afraid of me, but I think she’s tired of that fear now. She’s realized that I’m harmless. Barton is the dangerous one. Still, she doesn’t touch me. She stands, face pale.
“You can’t come to the store,” she says hoarsely.
“I don’t want a ride to the store. I want a ride into town. And I want—” I swallow hard, “I want my birth certificate, or any papers Barton has about me. I need the information to start a new life.”
“You can’t. People will—”
“I’ll wear a hat. Headscarves. My feet are covered. My skin... Gloves. Makeup. Tall boots. Long sleeves.”
“You... You can’t leave. Barton will—”
“Barton will have a punching bag here and not come after you? That’s not going to matter. I’m leaving with your help or without it.”
Sarah swallows. Several times. Then— “You can’t come with me. I don’t want you in my life.”
It hurts, in a way, but it’s nothing new. “That’s fine,” I say calmly. “I don’t want you in mine, either.”
“My friend is a pilot. She does charter flights to remote spots in the archipelago. She’s going to fly me to Washington. Once we land, you get away from me.”
That’s better than I hoped for! I won’t need a passport or identification on a private plane—at least, I don’t think I will from what I’ve read—and I can ask Mr. Taylor to send money so that I can take a train.
“Deal. Let me get my things.”
If Sarah is surprised that I come out in my mother’s old flared leg jeans and a striped sweater, she doesn’t show it. I think she’s conditioned her face not to show anything but a careful blank.
Barton is a bastard.
I’VE NEVER RIDDEN IN a car—not that I remember. Or a plane. I want to look around, but Sarah insists I lie down in the backseat, under heavy blankets. No one knows about me, she says. That’s why we live like this. So no one will ever know about me.
The car begins to move, and a shiver runs through me. This could be freedom from one prison, only to lead to another. Or something worse, an unfriendly world of stares and hostile strangers, or maybe Mr. Taylor is a criminal. Lesha told me she did a background check on him, and he seems “legit.”
I promised I’d pay her back, but I didn’t tell her that I’m not going to make any money. I told my professors I’m moving and promised to catch up on my work when I can, but I didn’t tell them I’m not going to have a computer or a phone or...
“You were already three or four when I met you. I can’t remember.
A wild thing, living outside more often than not, but always returning at night.
Barton married your mother young, right out of college, and they were going to be homesteaders.
But she had family in Europe, Germany—the Bavarian part.
She went over there for three months for Christmas—alone.
He didn’t want her to. Had a big fight. They’d already been fighting a lot.
That’s why she went. Over there, she had a fling with a demon, I guess. That’s what Barton said.”
“Demons?”
“I don’t know—but you look the way you look, and your mother wanted rid of you, and Barton tried his best to help her. Not that she loved him by then. You see how he is.”
“Yes. I see how he is.”
“She probably wouldn’t have come back at all, but she wasn’t a German citizen.
She only had a tourist visa. She left him the next December, when you weren’t more than a few weeks old.
Went back to her demon lover and left you behind.
He didn’t want you—half-human. She didn’t want you, ‘cause you were half-whatever. Besides, Barton said you were meant to be a curse. A punishment meant to be left behind to hang over him all his life as proof of his wife’s infidelity.
He said she called you some fancy German word, all strung together.
It means ‘shamed man’s child.’ Besch?mtenmannskinder, or something like that. ”
I’ll look that up.
If I ever get access to a computer or a German-English dictionary.
My stomach twists, and I get a very different picture of my mother than the pretty young woman I’d recently begun to dream about.
“I need my birth certificate.”
“There isn’t one. She had you at home. I think they thought you’d... Well. You didn’t.”
They thought I’d die. But I didn’t. There’s iron under this thick pink skin. Survivor. I swallow hard. I have to keep believing it. “Look, he registered me for college. How? I needed papers, I needed—”
“Your mother’s name. He used all of her old documents. She didn’t take anything with her.”
Well. That sounds ominous.
“But they don’t call me by her name.”
“You can list what name you’re given, and what you want to be called, like a nickname.”
“Do you know where her papers were?”
“No. Barton must have had them someplace. You won’t need them. You can get new ones. Say you lost them in a fire or something. You don’t need them to find work. Where are you going?”
“I don’t know where I’ll end up.” I’m cautious about revealing too much, about who is helping me, about what I know about the outside world. Survivors are probably cautious, I realize. That’s how they live so long.
“You could call the college. Or show up there in person, maybe. Tell ‘em you need copies of your papers. You could go back. Without me there, with Barton gone for two weeks—”
“No.” I cut off Sarah’s speech, hating the eagerness in her voice. She wants rid of me. She’s even willing to leave me behind. I wonder if survivors cut people off like that, too, if they only care about saving themselves.
I hope I’m never like that.
“No, I’ll get by fine once I’m in Washington.”
I keep silent for the rest of the journey. I don’t know if what I said is true—but then again, I don’t know if anything that Sarah told me is true, either.
“CAROL, THIS IS A FRIEND. From the women’s shelter. She’s not going to be any trouble, just let her sleep it off.”
“I’m not drunk. I’m just... tired,” I extend my gloved hand and shake Carol’s hand, while Sarah looks on, horrified.
Carol, a wiry woman with spiky hair, smiles and doesn’t seem to think anything is odd about me.
“Welcome aboard. You travel light—thank goodness. I can put you down in Washington, or you can come on the next leg with me to Idaho.”
I picture a map of the country I’m part of, but have never explored. Idaho is closer, and planes are faster than trains—one assumes. “That’s wonderful. I’ll pay you back one day.”
“Oh, heck, honey, you don’t have to. You’d be surprised how many women I fly out of the far reaches.
Men seem to think they own you in the wilderness.
Assholes. Anyway, no shame. I was in a situation like yours and Sarah’s for far too long, and on a military base surrounded by good men and women.
It took me thirteen years to walk away, but I’ve never looked back.
But I don’t like anyone getting too much in my business on these trips.
You never know when someone’s going to recognize someone else, tell a friend of a friend that he saw someone’s wife.
” Carol looks me over. “Bundled up. That’s smart. And it’s freezing.”
We settle into the back, Sarah in one of the two front seats on the right, with me crouched low in the back seat on the left, as far as I can get from her—the way she wants it.
“What about the car?” I ask in a murmur.
“I don’t need it. It’s in Barton’s name. Let him find it when they tow it. I don’t want a thing to tie me to him.” Sarah doesn’t even look at me. Doesn’t turn around. She just falls asleep before we even take off.
Not that I would tell her that I feel like I’m dying when we race and rumble up to the sky. Or that I feel dizzy and sick, and my slightly pointy ears ache from the inside out.
It hits me, as I shiver and hug myself, that it takes a very special sort of person to raise a child—even a half-demon kid like me—for fifteen years and not want anything to do with me, not a single hug or kind word.
But maybe she stopped Barton from hurting me. Maybe she kept him from putting me out in the icy water or leaving me in the middle of nowhere—even more than we were in Eagle Arch.
I think of what she let me do when Barton was gone.
Read and color.
Watch television, lots of shows where they taught me how to read and do math. Some about geography and animals. All of that faded when I got older. Vanished when he was home.
Maybe she wanted me out of her hair. Maybe she didn’t know how else to be kind without letting herself get punished for it.
No matter what, I used what I learned. I kept busy, I’m earning a degree, I’m earning my keep—or I will be.
Sarah sleeps on, sleeping like she’s near death, exhausted.
I don’t know how to feel about her. So I just feel numb.
Until we get to Washington. Sarah offers a big, tearful thank-you to Carol and a small nod to me before rushing away.
I stay on the plane and try not to cry. It’s not that I loved Sarah. But I knew her. She was the closest thing to a mom that I had.
Now I have nothing. Nothing good. Nothing familiar.
“I’ve got to refuel, kiddo. Need to make a call? Use the internet? Get a bathroom break and a snack?”