Sing Me Your Scars (Apex Voices Book 3) (2 page)

I sit on the edge of the examination table without prompting. His
face is grim, studied, as he inspects the wrist, and even though his touch is
gentle, I watch his eyes for signs of anger. I know the rot is not my fault,
but innocence is no guard against rage.

He makes a sound deep in his throat. Of sorrow? Condemnation?

Lillian weeps, then begs, then prays. None of which will make any
difference.

The rot binds us to him as the stitches bind them to me. A
prison, not of bars, but circumstance. I have entertained thoughts of the
scissors and the thread, the undoing to set us free, but I have no wish to die
again, and neither do the others. While not perfect, this existence is
preferable. And what if we did not die? What if our pieces remained alive and
sentient? A crueler fate I cannot imagine.

He scrapes a bit of the rot away, revealing a darker patch
beneath. When he lets out a heavy sigh, I note the absence of liquor on his
breath.

He busies himself with the necessary preparations, and Lillian
begins to cry again. The others remain silent. He paints the wrist with an
anesthetic, which surprises me. My tears have never stopped him from his work.
I close my eyes and feel pressure. Hear the blades snipping through the
stitches. Smell the foul scent of decay as it reaches out from beneath.

He places the hand in a small metal tray, then coats the
remaining flesh in an ointment that smells strongly of pine and wraps it in
gauze.

“We shall know in a few days.”

Diana’s worry is as strong as mine. Lillian tries to speak but
cannot force the words through her sorrow and fear.

§

When the anesthetic wears off, the skin gives a steady thump
of pain from beneath the gauze and I do my best to ignore it.

“At least it was only the one,” Grace says.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Lillian snaps.

“What if it spreads?” Diana asks.

Molly mutters something I cannot decipher, but it makes Lillian
weep again.

“Hush,” says Therese. “Remember Emily? She had reason to weep.
You do not.”

Sophie laughs. The sound is cruel. Hard.

“Stop, please, all of you,” I finally say. “I need to sleep. To
heal.”

Heal is not the right term, perhaps
remain
would be
better.

“I’m sorry, Kimberly,” Lillian says softly.

The sound of my real name hurts, but not as much as the false
one. At least Kimberly is, was, real.

The rest apologize as well, even Sophie, and fall silent. I toss
and turn beneath the blankets and eventually slip from my bed. The others say
nothing when I open the small door hidden behind a tapestry on the wall. The passageway is narrow and dusty, and spiders scurry
out of my way; it travels around the east wing of the house—the only part of
the house where I’m allowed—then leads to the central part, the main house.
There are small covered holes here and there that open to various rooms, to
carpets my feet will never touch and sofas I will never recline upon. The
passageway also goes to the west wing of the house, but the rooms are unused
and the furniture nothing more than cloth covered shapes in the darkness. The
only doors I have found lead to bedrooms—mine, his, and one other designed for
guests, although we never have guests stay—and one near the music room.

There is, as always, a race in the heartbeat, a dryness to the
mouth, when I creep from the passage and make my way to the servants’ entrance.
The air outside is cold enough to take my breath away as I follow the narrow
path that leads to the gate in the outer wall. There is another path that leads
down the hill and into the town, but the gate is locked.

I pretend that one day I will walk through the gate and down that
path. Leave this house behind; leave him behind for good. But if I ran away and
the rot returned, who would fix me? The rot would not stop until it consumed me
whole.

I know this for truth because he left it alone the first time to
see what would happen, and the rot crept its way up until he had no choice but
to remove the entire arm. Her name was Rachael, and he removed both arms so he
could then attach a matching set.

Most of the windows in the town are dark. The church’s steeple
rises high, a glint of moonlight on the spire. I have heard the servants talk
about the market, the church. Beyond the town, a
road winds around a bend and disappears from sight.

My parents’ farm is half a day’s travel from the town by horse
and carriage. It would be a long, difficult walk but not impossible.

I wonder if Peter, my eldest brother, has asked for Ginny’s hand
in marriage yet. I wonder if Tom, younger than I by ten months, has stopped
growing (when I fell ill, he already towered over all of us). I wonder if my
mother still sings as she churns butter. And my father…the last thing I remember
are the tears in his eyes. I hope he has found a way to smile again; I wish I
could see them all once more, even if only from a distance.

I wait for someone to speak, to mention escape and freedom, but
they remain silent. After a time, I return to my bed and press my hand to
Molly’s chest. The heart belongs to someone else, someone not us. Sometimes I
think I feel her presence, like a ghostly spirit in an old house, but she never
speaks. Perhaps there is not enough of her here to have a voice. Perhaps she simply
refuses to speak.

I wish I knew her name.

§

Although the stump shows no more signs of rot, he doesn’t
replace Lillian’s hand. It makes dressing difficult at best, but I manage.

After supper, when all the servants have gone, I join him in the
music room. I sing the songs he has taught me. Melodies which were strange and
awkward at first now flow with ease; foreign words that fumbled on my tongue
now taste of familiarity.

He accompanies me on the piano he says belonged to his mother.
Only two songs tonight, and after the second, he waves his hand in dismissal,
and I notice the red in his eyes and the tremble in his fingers. Perhaps he is
worried about the party.

When he comes to my room in the middle of the night, I hide my
surprise. He usually doesn’t touch me unless I’m whole, but by now I know what
is expected, so I raise my chemise and part Therese’s legs. When he kisses my
neck, I pretend it belongs to someone else. Anyone else. The others whisper to
me of nonsense as a distraction. Thankfully, he doesn’t take long. 

After he leaves, I use Lillian’s finger to trace the stitches.
They divide us into sections like countries on a map. The head, neck, and
shoulders are mine; the upper torso, Molly’s; the lower torso, Grace’s; Diana,
the arms; Lillian, the hand; Therese, the legs and feet; Sophie, the scalp and
hair.

I make all the pieces of this puzzle move, I feel touches or
insult upon them, but they never feel as if they belong completely to me. He
may know how everything works on the outside, but he doesn’t know that they are
here with me on the inside, too. We plan to keep it this way.

§

Once a week, in the small operating theater, he has me strip
and he inspects all the stitches, all the parts. He checks my heart and listens
to me breathe. I hate the feel of his eyes upon me; it’s far worse than
enduring his weight in my bed.

Not long after he brought me back, I tried to stab myself with a
knife. At the last moment, I held back and only opened a small wound above the
left breast. Stitches hold it closed now.

He says the mind of all things, from the smallest insect to the
largest animal, desires life, no matter the flesh. He says I am proof of this.

But it was Emily’s doing. She was with me from the beginning, and
she was always kind, always patient. She helped me stay sane. Like a mother,
she whispered soft reassurances to me when I cried; told me I was not a monster
when I insisted otherwise; promised me everything would be all right. She
taught me how to strip the farm from my speech.

He tried hard to save her, carving away at the rot a bit at a
time, but in the end he could not halt its progress. She screamed when he split
apart the stitches. I did, too. Sometimes I feel as if her echo is still inside
me and it offers a small comfort. Therese is kind, but I preferred my walk when
it carried Emily’s strength.

§

“I will unlock your door when the party is over,” he says.

I nod.

“You will stay silent?”

“Yes.”

“I would not even hold this party if not for my father’s
insufferable tradition. I curse him for beginning it in the first place, and I
should have ended it when he died.”

I know nothing of his father other than a portrait in the music
room. He, too, was a doctor. I wonder if he taught his son how to make me.

The key turns in the door. I sit, a secret locked in with the
shadows.

§

Even from my room, I can hear the music. The laughter. I
creep in the passageway with small, quiet steps, extinguish my lamp, and swing
open the spyhole. The year before, I was recovering and did not know about the
passageway; the year before that, I was not here.

I twine a lock of Sophie’s hair around my finger and watch the
men and women spinning around on the dance floor, laughing with goblets of wine
in hand, talking in animated voices. He is there, resplendent in a dark suit,
but I don’t allow my eyes to linger on him for too long. This smiling man is as
much a construct as I am.

“I had a gown like that blue one,” Grace says. “Oh, how I miss
satin and lace.”

“Please,” Lillian says. “Let us go back. I can’t bear to see this.
The reminder hurts too much.”

“Hush,” Molly says.

“I wish we could join them,” Diana says.

Sophie says, “Perhaps he will bring us some wine later. And look,
look at the food.”

Therese makes a small sound. “Look at the way they dance. Clumsy,
so clumsy.”

I sway back and forth, my feet tracing a pattern not from
Therese, but a dance from my childhood. I remember the harvest festival, the
bonfire, the musicians. My father placed my feet atop his to teach me the
steps, and then he spun me around and around until we were both too dizzy to
stand.

Therese laughs, but there is no mockery in the sound. I close my
eyes, lost in the memory of my father’s arms around me, how safe and secure I
always felt. I would give anything to feel that way again.

The music stops, and my eyes snap open. A young woman in a dark
blue gown approaches the piano, sits, and begins to play. The music is filled
with tiny notes that reach high in the air then swoop back down, touching on
melancholia. It’s the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. Everyone falls
silent, even Lillian.

Then I see him watching the girl at the piano. His brow is
creased; his mouth soft. I hear a strange sound from Sophie. She recognizes the
intensity of his gaze. As a kindness, I let go of her hair. Does he covet this
girl’s arms? Her hair? Her face?

Lillian begins to weep again, and it doesn’t take long for the
rest to join her. All except Sophie. She never cries.

§

“He will not,” I say.

“He will do whatever he wants. You know that,” Sophie says.

“She is not sick,” Grace says.

“Neither was I,” Sophie hisses. “He saw me in the Hargrove
market. He gave me
that
look, then I woke up here.”

“But you do not know for certain,” Therese says. “The influenza
took so many.”

“I was not sick.” Sophie’s voice is flat. Then, she says nothing
more.

Hargrove is even further away than my parents’ farm. I bend my
head forward, and Sophie’s hair spills down, all chestnut brown and thick
curls. My hair was straight and thin, best suited for tucking beneath roughspun
scarves, not hanging free, but still I cried when he replaced it.

§

He is drunk again. His voice is loud. Angry. I pull the
sheets up to my shoulders and hope he doesn’t come to visit. When he is drunk,
it takes longer.

Sometimes I want to sneak into his study and take one of the
bottles and hide it in my room. On nights when I can still hear my mother
saying my name; when I can remember the illness that confined me to my bed and
eventually took my life; when I recall the confusion when I woke here and knew
something was wrong.

But those nights happen less and less, and I’m afraid I will
forget my mother’s voice completely. Would she even recognize me with Sophie’s
hair in place of my own? Would she run screaming?

§

On Sunday morning, I creep through the passageway. Step outside.
The servants have the day off, and he has gone to mass. Even here, I can hear
voices in song. I remember these songs from my own church where I sang with the
choir. I have never known if he heard me somehow and chose me because of my
voice, but I remember seeing him on the farm in my fifteenth year when Peter
broke his arm, two years before the influenza epidemic.

“We should leave,” Sophie says.

“Yes, we should run far away,” Lillian says.

“And where would we go?” Molly asks.

“Anywhere.”

Therese laughs. “And who will fix us if we rot?”

“Better that we rot away to nothing than remain here,” Sophie
says.

The others start speaking over each other, denying her words. In
truth, I do not know what I want. When I head back inside, the voices outside
are still singing and those inside still arguing.

§

Days pass, then weeks. The stump remains rot free, but he
says nothing of it, only nods when he does his inspection.

He spends his days in the town, ministering to the sick. I spend
mine in the library, reading of wars and dead men and politics. Rachael taught
me how to read; now Sophie helps when I find myself stuck on a word.

§