Where Bluebirds Fly (11 page)

“I—” I try to stop his words, pulverizing my heart.

His soft lips crush mine, and I feel his tongue, hot in my mouth. My whole body convulses.
 
His hands slide round, hoisting me onto his lap.

Fear and duty and the stocks nag my conscience. I should push him away, but I do not. I cannot.

There is a bonding, it feels almost holy.

He pulls back to regard me. “I want you to stay. There has to be a way…”
 

I have no answer.
I
silence
him
this time. My lips part his, and I bite his bottom lip.

I’ve never kissed anyone this way before.

The situation is impossible. I beat back the pain, crouching around my heart, waiting for my return. It is inexcusable to give into despair with him so close.
 
I refuse to waste the feeling of him under me.

I take a deep breath, but cowardly close my eyes. “Make me feel
completely
alive, before I die again, when I step back across that bridge.”

He makes a quiet noise, kissing me harder.

I can almost touch the bonding, feeling it flow and ebb between us. A living, pulsing, captured lightning, intertwining our bodies.

As his hands race up and down my back, I finally understand why the other girls are so obsessed with men, and marriage. I’d choose to stay here, if I could.

To even live in this dangling spot of time.
 

His lips leave my mouth and trail down my neck. His calloused fingers trace along my collarbone with such tenderness, tears spring in my eyes. I remember the lashings, the stocks, the sting in my cheek after the blows.

It seems he is trying to commit every inch of me to memory.
Pain crushes my insides. How will I bare these memories, when I am alone again?

A gale picks up, blowing a flurry of leaves against us. The stalks writhe, undulating like underwater reeds in a current.

The passion drains from his face, and he hauls me to stand. “I think the door to Salem is closing, your moon is gone.”

“I must get back!”

His eyes are a deep well of pain, but he dusts off my dress.

“Please, keep checking the door. I will too. This cannot be all there is…” His voice rises with a fierce anger. I cringe involuntarily. My mouth spasms, but I can’t respond.

His grip tightens as we dart headlong toward the bridge. Our footsteps echo as the old wood creaks under us. We reach the top.
 

“I don’t think I can go further,” he says, reaching the top of the arch. “This is where you disappeared last time.”

I stare at him, indecision tearing my heart like a wishbone. I can never leave John, but I long to remain with Truman, to hear his words, to touch him….

“Come with
me
, Truman.”

His face is agony. His lips open, and he bites the lower one. “I-I so want to.” His face turns to look at the house, visible over the corn tops.

His grip crushes my shoulders, and he folds me into him. “I’ve never wanted anything more,” his hoarse voice whispers into my ear.

He places a final rough kiss on my mouth. He pushes me back. His eyes are glistening.

The wind picks up, swirling my hair into my face. Below my boots, the bridge rumbles up and down like a thunderclap has overtaken it, infusing it with life. Warning me.

“Please don’t forget me.” My eyes flick away. The pain is waiting. It lurks at the bottom of the bridge.
 

“That isn’t physically possible. You never leave my head.” His voice is fierce.

I clutch at my throat, ripping off my necklace. My only memento of my mother. The little heart is so important to me—I irrationally feel this gesture must
somehow
bind us together-no matter the time.
 

“So you shan’t forget me.”

“I don’t want you to go, Verity. I’d do anything to change it. I don’t know how. Be careful. Please come back—
tomorrow
—if the door is open. Surely, it will open.”

I step out of his embrace and across the flexuous line in space, dividing the bridge in two. “I will, Truman.”

I feel the warmth of his fingers slip as I take the final crucial step.

And.

I am alone on the bridge. Falling clusters of snowflakes gather in my hair, immediately dowsing my dress. The taste of him lingers in my mouth.

Turning back to the spot where he had stood, I reach my hand up to feel the fluid-air, but all that remains is a gust of wind.

He is gone.

* * *

Chapter 9

The morning sun shone through Truman’s window, heating one side of his face till it itched.
 
He squinted at the laptop screen, and trying futilely to rub the sting out of his eyes. The words were blurring. He hadn’t slept since he left Verity in the corn.

How could he?
His mind played devil’s advocate, telling him she was a stress-induced hallucination; but his body wouldn’t hear of it.

He sniffed his sleeve...then inhaled deeply; her scent still clung to his clothing. His mind couldn’t leave her, returning again and again to her skin, her face. His fingers absently rubbed together. He could almost feel her spiral curls around his fingers.

He reached inside his trouser pocket, pulling out her delicate silver locket. His tangible proof she existed. He smiled. Should he hide it?
If Ram found it
…he wasn’t ready to tell him.
 

The locket shone in the sunlight, sending a shower of reflective sparkles glittering on the wall.

He decided, a little sheepishly, to wear it.

She was real, so he wasn’t crazy. But she’d sparked a new kind of madness.
 

His mind, chock-full of layered images, analyzed her every gesture, every pull of her mouth. It felt bloated, ready to burst.

How would he think of anything else?
Everything else paled against his desire to see her again.

A strange, gnawing fear was growing. It said, ‘
you won’t see her again
.’ As if one afternoon of pure happiness was his life’s quota.
 

His thick fingers fumbled with the locket’s tiny clasp, but he finally managed to get it around his neck. He slipped it under his sweater. He was smitten, but not an idiot.

His lips twitched, and he smiled. Keeping perspective had never been a problem before, but it was definitely a problem now.

Ram would take the Mickey out of him for this totally whipped gesture.

He will not believe me.

“I don’t care.” The sound of his voice in the morning silence was jarring. His heart ping-ponged between exultation and apprehension.

“I just should’ve went with her.”

But guilt at even the thought of that selfishness swatted down the mental volley.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. The feel of the tiny heart against his chest gave him something tangible, a reminder she was real,
somewhere
.
 

Something shimmered on his bicep. Another living testament that she wasn’t fiction. A singular, red strand glittered with golden highlights in the sun.

He left it there. Staring at it.

You are acting like a school-boy.
 

He smiled so wide his face hurt.

He balanced the laptop precariously on his bed, hitting the Google search for the third straight hour.

He typed, ‘
Salem Witch Trials Verity Montague
’ again.
 

“You have to be somewhere, Verity.”

No results found
, glared back from the screen.

No such person appeared to have been associated with the trials.

He scrolled through now familiar names, searching for anything. Some distant relative?

Mercy Lewis, Reverend Parris, Tituba…and finally, the words,
Maine Indian Raids
.

“Yes!” he whooped, and then quickly covered his mouth, checking the time.

Five a.m.

Only a half hour remained till the morning pandemonium.
 
The high school portion of the orphans would wake within the hour. As if on cue, a shuffling pair of sock-clad feet past his door, enroute to the bathroom.

His eyes flicked back to the screen, reading furiously.

The Maine Indian Raids left young Mercy Lewis orphaned, so Reverend George Burroughs took her in; they eventually moved south to Salem, Mass. Ultimately, Mercy ended up as a servant in the Putnam household, where she too, became afflicted. Mercy was supposedly visited by many of her fellow parishioners in spectral form. All it took was an accusatory proclamation by one of the afflicted girls for the authorities to bring in the defendant for questioning.
 
So, if one was unpopular, such as Sarah Good, who was many times widowed, and had to resort to begging…

He scanned further down.

Or if one was deemed different, in a Puritan time so set upon sameness, these ones were optimal targets for accusation, and subsequent hanging. Indeed, the Puritans were a superstitious lot, mistrusting peoples with red hair—anything unfamiliar was to be considered as a possible witch.

An impossible hole ripped open his chest, accompanied by a sensation of falling. He fell into fear’s gaping mouth, its gnashing circle quickly morphing into the hangman’s noose.

“Oh, Verity. Why aren’t you mentioned here? Where are you in history?”

His eyes shot around the room, unseeing; looking futilely for answers.

His eyebrow rose.

A wooden box, another gift from his father, was cracked open a fraction of an inch.

Irritation rose with his brows. The children were not allowed in his room, let alone in his personal effects.

He leapt off the bed, heading over to it.
 

Cracking it open, he paused, staring at the contents.

What? Who?

The box was brimming with canary-yellow candies. At least they
looked
like candy?
 

He plucked one out, and popped it in his mouth.

Lemon drops?

He lifted a handful, sliding them into his pocket.

At the bottom, slipped under the candy, was a yellowing, ancient piece of paper.
 

His heart skittered and stutter-stepped against his ribcage.
 

He carefully slid the candies off, unfolding it. Bits of parchment sprinkled down to the floor.

~ ~ ~

Where fears are born, and given legs,

A place to grieve, to heal, to beg.

To dare to dream, to face your fear,

And rescue what you hold most dear.

~ ~ ~

Ice water trickled through his veins, solidifying in his legs, which now felt heavy and weak. Again the surreal feeling. He half-wondered if Dave had a camera planted in his room somewhere.

Ram poked his head in the door.

He jumped two feet. “Fer the love of all that’s holy, do you ever bloody knock?”

His hand dropped guiltily, trying nonchalantly to hide the paper behind his back.

Ram’s eyes were wary. “You coming down or what? Breakfast won’t make itself, you know. Plus, they’re bringing the new boy for O.T., then he’s to stay.”

“Yes, well I’m sure that O.T. session will make him incredibly happy. He’ll be thinking from the frying pan to the fire.” He laughed. It sounded bitter. “I think the bureaucrats who write the rules for therapy should have to actually implement them one day.”

“Isn’t that what you had on yesterday?”
 

Ram’s dark eyes narrowed, but a boy’s call distracted him and he left, padding down the hall. His face said he wasn’t awake enough for interrogation.

Hesitating, he plucked Verity’s hair from his arm, and folded it into the locket. He snapped it shut, giving the laptop one last look. He stared at the parchment, deciding.

He placed it back under the lemon drops. If he carried it on him, it would disintegrate by day’s end.

He’d already memorized it, anyway. He wondered who had written it. And if he really wanted to know.
 

He followed Ram down the stairs, nodding when expected at his conversation, but inside, the words from the internet kept repeating, ‘they were hanged for being different’.

* * *

I cling to Mercy’s arm. We huddle together in the back seat of the carriage as it rattles into Salem Town.

A storm rages on, as it has for days, fueling the tempers of the men in the carriage. Thomas Putnam, his brother Edward, Joseph Hutchinson and Thomas Preston argue all the way, each with his own particular opinion about the fate of the accused.