The Short Life of Sparrows (18 page)

“If you’re going to do it—no more birds, okay?” I watch the way his fists ball up. “She cried over the last ones. Preferably nothing furry or cuddly either.”

He surveys the treetops, pursing his lips. “Well, then you’re probably going to want to take a walk or busy yourself with something else for a few minutes.” He storms around the side of the house, and I can hear him jog up the porch steps.

He’s as difficult as Calli
. But the poor girl has been miserable, and I’m not one to protest her healing sooner. Muttering to myself, I leave the ax and scoop up my water jug to refill it. Having an excuse for not stopping Rowe in case Lil comes back seems wise anyhow.  I’m certain that even someone as threatening as Rowe would be the recipient of a broom in his backside if Lil found him doing magic in her house. Other than Calli recovering, Rowe being chased from the house by Lil would be the definite highlight in my day. I turn my attention away, walking for the well, and feigning ignorance of what he’s about to do.

23

CALLI

T
he smeared shapes of faces ripple over me. I feel like I’ve only blinked once, but each one disappears. Lil is the sole constant in my room. Her mouth bends downward in apprehensive lines as she bathes my forehead—her worn hand often patting my cheek. Things cloud around me, the light and dark folding into each other so rapidly. I’ve lost all sense of time as I lie there. An overbearing heat rips through me, only interrupted by a nasty chill that I can’t defeat.  The pain needles behind my eyes, the burning warmth on my eyelids as my mouth grows drier. A heavy weariness clings to me like a knotted net that I can’t untangle. 
I’m so very tired
.

A large, firm hand combs my damp hair back from my cheeks. 
It’s not Lil this time
. It must be Isaiah sitting with me. Even breathing is its own chore, and so I don’t battle to part my eyes as he lifts my head to adjust my pillow. I feel his fingers retying the loose strings at the top of my nightdress. If I wasn’t preoccupied by the headache, I’d say something cheeky to Isaiah about how modest he is. The hand moves, flattening gently on my collarbone. The other hand stops near my chin, the thumb stroking my lips for a moment. My shoulders tense at this, and it registers that Isaiah would never do such a thing.

My eyes flutter open slightly, and all I see are those severe blue eyes—set and calculating—as he hovers over me. “What are you doing?” I manage, squirming unsuccessfully as he holds the heel of his hand to my skin.

He doesn’t explain himself. Rowe chants, the words rolling from his lips with absolute aggression, like arrows drawn at a target. My spine arches, every muscle pulled upward around his touch. I feel as if we’ve both floated from off of the ground, but the bitter shock that surges through me makes it impossible to concentrate on anything. With my eyes scrunched together, my arms and legs seizure. I jerk without any capacity to stop the violent tremors. My teeth clatter. The cold vibrates and rages through the ends of my toes and fingers, my lips buzzing and my heart quickening with the raw force of the incantation.

A light as searing white as lightning encompasses me, as I feel the flat, warm part of his palm push harder against my clammy, wet skin. The low, rich sound of his voice continues on—the chanting becoming louder and more deliberate.

With a deafening crack sounding from outside, the ground shakes and my bed slams at the floorboards with the impact. It registers that my bed really was floating a minute ago. As my body relaxes against the sheets, everything grows silent. The exhaustion hasn’t left me, but the pain and heat are gone. My head no longer feels dense or groggy, and my vision clears. Sudden awareness of how gross and wretched I must be makes me shrink under the quilt, pulling it around my chin. His outline loses the fuzziness as I watch him, unable to articulate all of the ways I feel exposed at this moment. He tucks my hair to my ears, looking down at me with such a peculiar expression—a stare that seems to reach within me and uncover every unspoken thought.

“You’re no good for me,” I whisper. “I thought I’d said so already.”

He squints his right eye, a faint smile toying at the side of his mouth. “I know.” Rising from my bed, he peers out through the further of my two windows. His forehead lifts with an assured sense of satisfaction. “You seem to be back to your ornery, pain-in-the-ass self at least. And your Ordinary friend shouldn’t have much trouble with felling firewood.”

He says nothing more, exiting my room without any gesture toward me. I push the covers to my lap as I sit upward, bending to get a view of the back of the house. An amassing group of Seers stands by our clothesline, mumbling to each other as they point at it. Peeling the quilt away from me, I toss it aside, tiptoeing to the glass. I’m thankful he chose something less harsh than living creatures to channel—something that I won’t feel guilty over—although it’s beyond embarrassing.
Everyone will know it
. There’s no burying this or hiding his use of magic in my behalf this time. The large swath of leveled forest looks as if a tornado lit through it. Fallen pines and uprooted aspens litter the ground. I watch as Rowe walks quickly past the group of girls. They all turn, gawking at the wrinkled mess that I am—dumbstruck and frozen for their consideration in my window. I’m sure I can guess exactly what will fuel their gossip today.

I nudge the windowpanes apart, indulging in all of their confused chatter. As I hear Odella and the other Coven Mistresses cluck and rant about the new eyesore, I see Lil and Mildred join the women. Lil’s hands are to her waist as Odella waves her arms at it. Isaiah looks over at me, withholding a full grin as Lil instructs him with where he can pile it all. I put a hand to my mouth to muffle my laugh. Drawing my curtains over the window, I realize that my bed is three feet from its usual place alongside the wall. I rub my neck, discovering the tight and poorly executed bow at the top of my nightgown.  I can’t help it—I laugh. I laugh harder as I realize that Rowe felt the obligation to secure my clothes before dealing with my fever.

24

ISAIAH

A
dusty breeze lifts the stale midday heat. I’m crouching on my heels, pouring canteen water over my dirty hands to scrub them of the morning’s dirt when I see Daphne’s face appear just above the tall waving grasses. She has a scheming smile before glancing back over her shoulder. Her dress only hugs her legs and hips when she steps around the dense patches of thorny weeds. Those curves—they’re more noticeable than any woman in a restricted fabric. The other young Seers wear tight things that keep them from breathing or moving in a natural way, and the mystery of their bodies is deliberately missing. But not her. Daphne walks and moves with an air that begs the fabric about her waist and chest to meet her skin.

As I watch her weave through the field toward me, she’s unaware of how my eyes envy her white dress—how jealous I am that it keeps the secret of what’s beneath it. The sun dances on the top of her brown hair, and surrounded by the wild green of summer, I think how she’s made a vacant field an unexpectedly incredible view.
I want her
. Not that it’s a new development. It’s this pressing and coursing need, pumping through me, even as I remind myself I can’t act on it.

My unwelcome imagination has me too busy extinguishing a barrage of images while she gets closer to where I’m standing—images of her hair unwound from its golden combs. I can’t seem to respond in a detailed way. “Hey.”

“Hi.” Her downward grin has a recognition to it, and I realize my gaze must have been far more telling than I’d hoped it to be.

“Isn’t somebody going to notice you being here?”

She puts her hands to my sides, the eagerness flickering across her face. The warmth of my stomach under her hands turns my attempts to breathe into a shallow sound.

“Calli is out riding. And everyone else is fighting over whether someone changed the face of the playing cards to win. When I left, there were tea kettles whirling above the tables, and my mother and Lil were trying to keep two Seers from putting a balding curse on another girl. Nobody is even going to notice I’m gone.”

With her fingers trailing my arm, she leads me by my other arm into the thick of the grass. Her wrists lock around my neck, and her lips take hold of mine. The pressure and resolve of her mouth makes me lightheaded, and I have to lace my fingers through hers to stop us both. “It’s the middle of the day, Daphne. Anybody could come along.”

“The longer you talk, the less time we have with each other,” she whispers against my earlobe, her tongue tracing the spot on my neck behind my ear. My whole body grows rigid, and I don’t mind when she pulls me down into the grass. “Nobody even knows we’re here,” she says against my mouth. “Isn’t it even a little bit tempting? A rush to be alone—without ducking behind a tree in the dark of night? Out in the open, and yet nobody can see what we’re about to do?”

What we’re about to do?
Propping my weight on one of my arms, I want to ask her what it is she means as I look down at her. I don’t know if she means kissing or something beyond it. I won’t pretend to have a grasp of what this is about to be. My stomach is knotted and my hands sweat as I lower myself over her. First she seeks me out, and then she teases me with words that would make any man consider a great many things. Her eyes dare me to get even closer as she hooks a finger into the collar of my shirt.

I’m kissing her now, taking every opportunity to taste the inside of her mouth with my tongue. As I feel her body contour to mine, my left hand cradles her waist. We end up on our sides, and she shifts into me again. Sliding my hand from her neck and downward, my palm shapes itself gently to her chest, wanting to feel every uneven breath as she looks at me. An uncontrolled sigh comes from her parted lips. I feel a little more confident—or senseless—and I let one hand disappear into the top of her dress. With her body arching from the ground into mine, I close my eyes. My fingers explore the bend between her breasts before I take the tip of one, rolling it between my fingers. She moans again, and I have to shut my eyes as I feel her legs wrap around me. As her hand brushes in between my legs, her touch settles there, silently asking me and the hardened length in my trousers to be closer, closer to her than I already am.

Her kisses become more rushed, and her fingers rake my hair. I’m shaking from the intensity of it, feeling the throbbing pain of this wanting going unanswered. I’ve lost track of everything else, just as she pauses with a hand to my cheek. “I didn’t suppose we’d get so,” she mutters. “—so carried away. Not that quickly. We can’t do something like that, not here. ”

I swallow so hard that my throat drops like a rock in the mud. I’m embarrassed that either of us needs to address the intimate turn that our kissing just took. “Yeah,” I say, rolling onto my back. “Of course not.”

She’s straightening the top of her dress and readjusting the combs in her hair, a breathless smile on her face. I force myself to return that smile. It’s better that she stopped us before our clothes were strewn and blowing across the field—that’s what I’m trying to believe. Yet, my body’s immense frustration battles all logical reason.

Daphne bends down to me, a quick peck of a kiss touching my winded lips. “I’ll see when I can get away again. Soon.”

Her sunbathed silhouette fades from sight, leaving me there to put myself back together. A wrenching guilt replaces everything as I sit in the dirt, fixing my shirt.
What am I doing
? I’m not in control of anything. She and I can use words like
temporary
, but these things we’re doing to pass the time will do nothing to soften the sting when I go. Still, I’ve gone from being invisible for eighteen years to someone that has the genuine affection and warmth of a beautiful woman. Daphne might be more right than she knows.

There’s a rush, a surge of anticipation that comes with the risks of our back and forth. It’s seducing, and it drives me to the edge of sanity when I’ve got her pressing herself to me, with only the two of us aware of it. I shouldn’t be wondering when we’ll touch each other or kiss again, but I am. I don’t see the use or the comfort in counting the days anymore.

25

CALLI

“W
hat are you doing here?” My question drips with contrived disgust. 
Rowe can’t just take to lurking on our property when he hasn’t been invited.
Flattering as his unannounced house calls are, I am never going to bat my eyes at his desertion of basic propriety.

“Hello to you too.” Rowe sticks his knife into the arm rest. The shadows darken his face as he rocks in Mildred’s chair, so I can’t tell whether he’s really as offended as his reply sounds.

“We’re missing two Seers,” Rowe continues. “Looks like they were taken. Lil and Mildred are at a summoning with the Coven Mistresses to figure out which way to look. I bet Murdoch finds them before the summoning yields anything though. And when he does, the Ordinary pus bag that tried to make off with them will be missing more than his coin purse.”

Isaiah stands in the open doorway, not showing any outward emotion. “Why would anyone take them?”

Rowe gives Isaiah a dicey glare. “Because Ordinaries think we’re little trick parrots. I’m sure they were probably taken to be pimped out for their magic—to predict people’s fortunes for hardly anything in return.”

“That’s sick,” Isaiah says, the words forced through closed teeth.

Rowe grabs his wrist, stretching his closed fist in a circular motion. “Well, Ordinaries are pretty nasty. That’s why I thought I’d better see that our token Ordinary is where he ought to be.”

“Like Nightbloods have any room to talk about being nasty,” I interrupt.
I’m not about to let Rowe wax moral to either of us
. “And it’s not up to you, who Isaiah spends time with. He may be the first real man I’ve known, and it’s refreshing. You Nightbloods all think your magic means heavy lifting is unnecessary. But there’s a lot of rotting wood and loose roofing around here that could use a little muscle. Thank goodness Isaiah doesn’t mind doing actual work.”