The End of the Sentence (9 page)

“We found a man for me to marry. This tiny town, there were only a few options. I’d known Michael since I was a child, and he’d always been kind to me. We’d be wed, and Michael was glad of it. Michael knew there was a child. I didn’t lie to him, but he didn’t meet Hew until that night at the forge. Hew was two years old, a little thing, hardly in the world yet, but giddy with it, nonetheless. I’d made him a little hand of silver. I didn’t ask Dusha for a hand made of flesh. That was more than I could imagine. I only wanted the hoof to go away, and I’d replace it. It was snowing that year, early and all the crops had withered on the vine, but it was hot underground, and Hew was frightened. Marvel Weyland began the ceremony, striking my hand, but Michael Miller, even as his hand was on the anvil, had second thoughts”—she reached out and picked up the solitary horseshoe, and gripped it so hard her knuckles whitened—“he said he would marry me, but that he wouldn’t raise another man’s child, and especially not a child who’d never be right. Hew was scared of the blood. He thought I was being hurt. He put his hand on the anvil between ours. Marvel Weyland struck it as he swung for Michael’s hand. My son died, and Chuchonnyhoof didn’t save him.”

She paused, clenching her fingers and then unclenching them, her face unreadable. 

“I promised him I’d see him in prison for it, and I kept him there. I’m not about to let things be easy for him, now that he’s getting out.”

I saw it all, the little boy, his malformed hand, Lischen bleeding, the boy bleeding, his hand struck by the hammer, flattened into this little horn of metal. Miller cringing from the monster. And all the while, Dusha Chuchonnyhoof, blue-eyed, stricken, watching. 

Lischen weighed the little shoe. 

“I don’t know where my hand went. Nor do I know what Dusha gave me in return, other than this long life, which I never wanted, and this left hand, which I wear, though it belongs to him. Michael Miller died that day, in the forge. Dusha didn’t kill him. I did.”

“How?” I asked. 

She looked steadily at me. She opened her lips. I could see her teeth again, too sharp, and her eyes glowed, and she was, for a moment, not a horse, not a woman, not a panther, but all of those things at once. You don’t run from a predator.

“My child was gone, and I hid myself away. Dusha went to prison for killing me. My family knew about my child, but dared not mention him in the press. Ironhide was the town’s secret, but the town turned on him. Now he’s coming home. His shoes must be the thinnest metal. He must be in agony. I haven’t had a home in a hundred years and more. He took my life and Hew’s. All the ghosts who serve this house. He’s the one who kept them here. He’s no good. He’s nothing good.”

She looked at me and her lip curled. 

“But you know what it is to lose a child. You know.”

“Chuchonnyhoof told me he could bring Row back if I helped him. He had a picture. But Row’s been dead a year.”

She shook her head, drops of cold water falling from her hair. “Maybe he could have done so before, though I offered him both my hands to bring back what was lost, and he told me such a thing was impossible. He’ll be weak now, and his skin near totally iron, and he will need the shoes, to stand upon the earth. You can’t make those shoes. Not alone. I want my son back. I need one more round of gifts, Malcolm.” 

We looked at each other. 

The clang of the letter flap, opening and closing. Lischen smiled through clenched teeth. “I think that’s for you.”

I heard hooves in the upstairs hallway, hooves on the staircase. I walked to the window. Lischen’s red truck and the old car that had come with the house were both gone. I didn’t dwell long on the manner of either of their leaving.

Hope. Lischen spoke as if the bargain, the anvil marriage had been commonly known. But so much time had passed—two lifetimes and a day—between then and now that no one would volunteer: “Come, and lay your hands across the anvil, and swear your love to one another in blood. Give me your hands.”

There were blackberries covering the kitchen table. Heaped and piled, masses of purple. On the bottom corner of the table, the berries were arranged to spell
Lischen
. 

She had said the house didn’t like her, but this was a gift. I took the letters out of the reed basket, and put the berries into it. I would bring them to her tomorrow. 

There was no such thing as a peace offering. I didn’t know what peace she might require. Dusha Chuchonnyhoof’s sentence ended hour by hour. 

Nerves and adrenalin chased themselves like snakes beneath my skin, and I did not sleep well. I half-dreamt of the heat of a forge and hand. Of poisoned earth, failure and death. Of Row, broken beneath the wheel of my car, and a silver hand in a pool of blood.

Then a noise, a shaking, drums. Louder. I sat up in bed, and could see the door shaking in the wall. 

Louder.

The door flew open.

Not drumbeats. Hoofbeats. Each pair of shoes galloping on its shelf. Lifting and falling as if there were hooves in them still. Almost in sync, almost exact, but for the off note of the one solitary shoe, still here. Why had she left it? 

It tripped from the edge of its shelf, and fell to the ground. As it hit, the galloping stopped. The only noise the pounding rush of blood in my ears.

The end of the sentence was here.

I could smell smoke drifting in, not just tendrils, but black smoke, darkening the air. The house was not on fire. It came from outside. I didn’t know anything about magic and monsters. I was just someone trying to start over. 

The house lit lights, brilliant ones, lights I hadn’t known existed, and boiled water to a screaming hiss. The house brought a basin, and with it a cloth, a cake of soap, and a razor. The house did not sing any longer, but tapped, ready, waiting for me to be ready alongside it. I felt the presence of Olivia and looked for a letter, but there was nothing. 

No, a word, twisting in the steam. 

Hope.

I looked at the clock. Midnight, the first moments of November. Was he at the edge of the property? Not yet. He would drive, as I had, from Salem, from the prison. The smoke was leaves and grass and trees, and the trees were from nowhere around here. Pines from the forests to the north. I could smell their needles. I looked at the solitary horseshoe, and picked it up. Hot, as though it had been galloping down a paved road for miles. 

I washed myself, and then saw the clothes the house had left me, pressed and ready. Ceremonial clothes. A suit, old-fashioned, long tails on the jacket and on the shirt, the shirt handstitched in fine cotton. The suit was black wool and handwoven, and the vest the same, lined in indigo silk. I knew where I’d seen them before. On Lischen’s father, in the photo in the closet. I looked at the monogram, and yes. The letters EM, elegantly stitched in blood-red thread on the cuffs. As I looked at them, they unraveled and then stitched themselves back again. 

MM, said the monogram now. The same initials as Michael Miller, I thought, and then I tried to throw that thought away, an image of him savaged, torn apart.

I put the shirt on. I stopped at the mirror over the dresser and looked at myself for a moment, then picked up something I’d kept from touching all these months since the accident. Row’s crown, bent and broken, cheap gilded tin. I flattened it gently, and pressed it into my shirt pocket. I put the solitary horseshoe there with it. All the while, smoke traveled through the bedroom, and I wondered if it was from the forge. There couldn’t be this much smoke from a single chimney. 

I should have spent more time in the library, Lischen was right. What did I know of the first of November? Nothing. Why were all the weddings this day? I’d assumed I’d have daylight to see by. I’d assumed Dusha would be released into the morning sun, but of course a prisoner would be released the moment the new day came, not hours after. He was free, and they would want to be free of him.

When I stepped out onto the front porch, I could see where the smoke was coming from. I marveled there wasn’t more of it. 

Fires all around the property line, bonfires, controlled. As far as I could see, there were stacks of wood silhouetted. I could see shadows of people at the edge of the flames, black figures, watching, milling about, and the sky was heavy with smoke. 

The tree stump before the house was no longer a stump. A tree stretched its branches, each one covered in leaves. I looked up at the fruit ripening there, a harvest far out of season, peaches and plums, apricots, nectarines from a single tree. All of them so heavy they could have fallen from the branches and exploded on the ground. There was a deep sweetness coming from the earth, and the boards of the porch creaked beneath my feet, feeling live as the tree did, as though the house was likely to grow leaves of its own. 

In my pocket, Hew’s shoe pressed and thumped, skittering against my fingers, almost playfully. 

There was another light, far off on the road. Two small yellow lights, like lanterns, moving slowly, strangely, swinging and bouncing. Was someone walking? Flashlights?

No, I realized, placing the sound. That was a car coming, and not a modern car. It sputtered, buzzing like something alive and wounded. It twisted slowly down the road from town, circling past the bonfires of my invisible neighbors. It was coming from the west. 

I looked at my watch. Three-thirty. I’d lost hours in the preparations.

To the property’s edge, that’s what Chuchonnyhoof had promised. I thought about Row. He’d never wanted to be a princess on Halloween. He’d been a goblin. That had been his costume, a grey sweatshirt, heavy and hooded, and pockets full of bartered sweets. He was afraid of wearing a mask. The most he’d consent to was a swipe of green below his eyes, goblin paint, and all night he’d ride my shoulders as though I was a horse. That was a real memory, that was true. 

“Slower, horse,” Row’s voice said in my mind. “Run slower.” His small hands reaching around my face to feed me candy.

The shoe wrapped around my fingers, warm metal, and I felt comfort from the strangeness of everything. I could see smoke coming up from the forge too, not lit by me. Smoke and dry dust, red metal. I could taste the iron in the air, along with everything else. My face smarted, stung by it. 

Maybe this would be my last night on earth, this cold, this smoke, these lights. 

The car came spinning over dirt, past the place the truck had been. The bonfires were high, and so I saw it too, the outlines of a vehicle decades out of date, and carrying a heavy weight. The car rattled and moaned over the ruts in the road. I couldn’t see into its windows. 

A figure passed before me, and I looked up, startled, to see Ralph, his white hair swept back and twisted into braids, his clothing entirely different from the red t-shirt and jeans I’d seen him wearing before. He wore an old-fashioned apron made of worn black leather, over a white shirt like my own, but less fine. He looked at me and smiled. 

“You wouldn’t think I’d let you do this alone,” he said. “You’re no blacksmith.” 

“I’m not,” I said. “But if I’m not the smith, what am I? This is my forge.”

Ralph looked at me as though I was a fool. 

“You’re the groom now,” he said. 

There was still time to run, I thought, still time to flee this thing I’d let find me. I’d run before. 

“This is your wedding night, Malcolm. May you have heaven in your heart. You’re getting someone who wouldn’t take me, nor anyone else. She’s been waiting for a match, to take her hand in his. She’s part of the town, and now you will be too.”

Lischen walked out of the dark, her hair streaming behind her, her dress white and perfect as the nightdress I’d seen in the vision. Her feet were in boots. She was both ethereal and ferocious, but when she looked at me, I saw nothing but vengeance. Her teeth were bared. The berries, I thought, the offering, and there they were, in my hand, the beautiful basket from the hall. 

Lischen looked at me, her composure broken for a moment. “Did you bring this to hurt me?” she asked.

“I would never want to hurt you,” I said, still missing things. Still not understanding. “They’re for you. From the house.”

She raked her fingers over the basket, touching each woven twig as though she knew it. 

“Yes, the house would give me this again. The end of the harvest,” Lischen said. “The offering. Don’t think I’ll do your bidding for these, Malcolm. These are only the tradition, not everything.”

“I give them to you,” I said again. “They’re a gift.”

Lischen looked up, her face flaring. 

“This is not about love,” she said. 

“This is about something else,” I said. I felt tranced, like I had the moment after the accident, Row in my arms, heavy mind, racing heart. I took a berry, and looking at me, she took one too. She pressed it into my mouth, and I tasted it, sweet and overripe, too much and not enough. I wanted more even as I wanted to spit it out. 

I pressed a berry to her lips, and felt them open, a strange feeling, like feeding a mare a sugar cube, and then that feeling was gone. 

“This is about everything else,” she said, looking at me with her golden not-horse’s eyes. 

The car came to a stop fifty feet from me, at the edge of the property that abutted the road, its headlights bright and yellow as Lischen’s stare. 

“They say on this night,” Ralph said, rolling up his sleeves to reveal arms startlingly muscular, “the dead can walk. Ione is out to dance on these grounds with those they’ve loved and lost. Every year we do it, but this year is stronger than it’s been in a hundred years and more, not since my grandmother’s time. We’ve been waiting, Malcolm, for the end of the sentence.”

“They say on this night,” said Lischen, “the dead can talk. There are dead I want to talk to. And there are those who should be dead, and aren’t. This is a wedding of the should-be-dead, Malcolm. I’ll take your hand in mine, if you’ll take mine in yours.”

The shoe thumped, once more, in my pocket. “I—” 

The door of the car opened with a crash and a clap, and a voice called out over the crackle of the flames, through the smoke and night moths, over the cry of a coyote somewhere far out in the hills. 

“Malcolm,” called the voice, gently, sweetly. “Malcolm.”