Where Bluebirds Fly (15 page)

“Get Sunny to stay. Tell her its overtime.”

He heard Ram’s exasperated cursing as he jogged into the corn.

* * *

My knees go weak at the sound.
Dogs.
Not far behind. I clap my hands over my mouth to stifle the scream clawing up my throat.

I whisper, “Run John!”
 

I grab his hand, and pull him, weaving through the stalks. Words shoot through my head like musket fire of emotions and color.
 

Doomed
,
fight
,
save him
.

“Verity, I’m frightened. They will hang me!”

“Oh John, oh my love! Keep running! Do not look back!”

A loud, booming voice rises over the barks. “Verity and John Montague, you are commanded to surrender on suspicion of witchcraft! If you cease to flee, the court will take this into consideration!”

 
John halts; his eyes trusting and clear.

“
No,
John.” I shake his shoulders. “Think of poor old Rebecca Nurse. She did nothing wrong. They lie to catch us.”

If I die, even if I don’t hang, he is lost. He will always see the best in people, even at their worst. I yank harder on his elbow.

Gratefulness opens a yawning hole in my chest. The bridge appears in the swirling snow ahead.

“Oh, thank Providence!”

Clomping up to the apex, I push him across it—
and run down the other side.

The door does not open. Same moon. Same cold night.

“Oh, no! Oh, no!”
 

My mind is shutting down. Giving up. I see little bits of my sanity flying off in all directions like a spinning wheel. With each revolution, I am going. Madness is very close.

The hornets. The hornets.
They fill my head. I stick a finger in my ear and shriek, swearing I feel its crunchy insect body escaping.

I pull John back up to the center of the bridge and wail, “Please, please help us! Do not let us die!”

The dogs’ yelp so close the hair on my arms stands.

“Verity…” John’s lips move, but no sounds come out. For once, we don’t need words as our eyes lock. Our fear is a synchronous, heaving being we both feel.

We are about to die.

For being different.

My legs collapse and I hit the hard wood of the bridge. My courage dries up and I sob, grasping at John’s pant leg. I feel his fingers touch the top of my head.

Then, a disembodied hand appears, its fingers fervently searching.

* * *

The night is beyond black. Every light in the orphanage is finally out. The lighted windows extinguished one at a time over the past hour. The house reminds him of an old man, who’s reluctant, fluttering eyes finally relented to sleep.

The flashlight’s beam cut through the rows, bouncing in time with his jogging.

Tonight feels…wrong. Something is up.

It’s as if the night is holding its breath, waiting, watching.

 
Something’s wrong, all right; aside from my mentally abusive job, that I’m emotionally retarded and almost lost all the funding for the house.

Waves of luminescent color, red and green, seep from the corn’s rows, like the whole field is under some blinding, celestial black-light.

 
He hears them. Those bloody bluebirds. Why are they out at night?
Abnormal.

His heart rockets and he walks toward the sound. His mouth waters with anxiety.

His mind nags this is one of those awful,
defining moments.

An
explosion
of blue erupts around him. Streaks made of bluebirds whiz past his eyes.

He stumbles, their unexpected attack causing vertigo. They’re so thick, he’s blinded.

A tornado of revolving feathers starts at his feet and rises to encircle his head.
 

Their trilling songs are too high. He winces and covers his ears.

And he’s alone again.

 
They take flight, like one collective mind, into the cornrows.

He feels the compulsion. To follow. He obeys, his feet digging in without his mind’s permission.

Weaving through the rows, they’re leading to the north bridge.

Longing and apprehension and agitation congeal in his stomach.
 

Bits of music waft through the corn and with each a new wave of emotion, and colors.

A cello calls from far away and is answered by a violin, like two loons exchanging vows.

Pain is everywhere. It’s palpable, like a breeze—it fills the air like a heady mist.

“What
is
this place?”

The voice of the corn, which is young and old, male and female, multi-layered and clotted—erupts beside his ear. “A place to right the wrongs.”

His breath puffs out in mini-gasps and his legs automatically bolt further inside.

Another round of music, from the south.
 
A drum and fife core. The snare drum and piccolo call out a staccato military march.
 

Then, what undoubtedly must be
his
song begins again. Judy Garland’s voice trickles through his blood, chilling it.
 

Verity is in trouble.

He knows it, can feel it to his marrow.

He launches to a run, winding in and out of the paths, hurtling downed stalks—his only thought,
the bridge. The bridge.

On the apex, Verity crouches, partially visible through the translucent, flexuous door.

Her mismatched eyes are wild, and her hands pat the entrance, as if searching for an opening. A young, gangly boy stands alongside her, crying.
Shaking
. With the most pathetic shade of despondent orange. As he moves, his color lingers, sticking to the air, like a comet’s tail.

Truman drops to his knees, feeling along the cold, hard surface of the door. It’s surface stings, like freezing snow, but he presses his fingertips harder, searching.

Verity’s sobbing and his heart is fracturing in his chest.
 
Her face appears an inch away—but the door…hundreds of years compressed into the small space between them.

Glistening, fat teardrop’s bead on her red lashes. They dangle then fall, in a strange slow-motion descent before disappearing into the snow.

Her mouth pulls a cruel grimace; her lips a frantic trembling mess.

“Oh, Verity.”

And he hears them. Dogs. They are after them.

Hatred sparks, flaring in his chest at the gross injustice; it spirals round in his head, gaining momentum, till all rational thought is incinerated.
 

He cocks his fist, slamming into the door,
over and over
. Blood trickles between his knuckles; he grunts at the snap as one breaks.

Through the door, the heightened sound of barking dogs. Tracking dogs.
 

The realization strikes like a bolt of fire.

“No. You
will
live.”

He rams his shoulder into the ice-door, grimacing at the pain in his broken fingers. He slams it, again and again, feeling the hot-cold pain sear his shoulder as the ice rips it open.

 
Finally, the door budges, fracturing down the middle; his fingers part the cold, cracking it wide-open.

It shudders as it slides; like a displaced, animated glacier.

His hand thrusts through the crack, his fingers frantically searching for her.

Truman’s fingertips brush a coarse texture; like a burlap feed-sack.

The air-door turns flexuous-a rectangular outline, shimmering in the night sky. It ripples as it melts, like the surface of a pool of water.
 

Through it, Verity’s moon appears, bright and full in the night sky.

The door phases again, changing to mist. It revolves and the sound of her sobs and the barks intensify.

“Verity! Where are you?” Her figure was dimming and brightening in time with the door’s clarity.

Truman grimaces and plunges both hands into the liquefied air, groping. His fingers find her coarse, long hair.

Her face turns away. She’s giving up. She turns, ready to bolt off the bridge, away from the dogs.
Away from him.
 

Gritting his teeth, his fingers reach for her and slip. He lurches forward in panic, grasping her dress with both hands, he heaves.

Her tiny body flies through the door, landing in a heap on his chest, flattening them both against the bridge.

The color surrounding her is horror-personified; black, spiraling clouds of flashing darkness.
 

“Truman! Truman!” her hands convulse with pain. “My brother, get my brother!”

“What?”

He turns as the door phases from translucent to transparent. The young man crouches on the other side of the bridge.
 

Truman swallows, vaulting forward.
Oh, his color…

The boy’s fear was a pulsing, shuddering, multi-hued monster.

A crowd of men and snarling dogs arrive simultaneously, hesitating at the bridge’s bottom.

One man in the crowd locks eyes with Truman—their gaze holds for a brief second, but he looks away, terrified.

“What devilry be this?” Corwin screams. Veins pop in his neck. “Where has your sister gone? Left you to hang for her deeds?”

“No! No! She is not a witch!” the boy says. He throws back his trembling shoulders.

His eyes flick to the revolving door. He gives no other indication that he’s seen it. Protecting her.

Truman rams the door harder, summoning all his strength. Another finger-bone snaps. The door’s surface glows and glitters; hard as diamonds once again.

Verity’s ragged breathing catches behind him.

“John Montague. You are hereby charged with witchcraft, and will be tried before your peers.”

“No! No!” Verity stumbles in sightless circles.

Her wail freezes his blood. It is primal and maternal, as if by taking John, they have excised her beating heart from her chest.

She bends in half, crumpling into a fetal position.

In desperation, he slams the door again, knowing it’s useless.
 

It was a solid, transparent door to nowhere. His shoulder screams in pain.

She lifts her red eyes, and begins crawling toward the door, pleading, “Please, take me. Not him. Please, merciful Father.”

 
It’s a window, now, not a door.

“John, no, not my John,” Verity sobs.
 

He lowers his head, and rams it again; the sound of tinkling glass echoes through the corn.
 

Shimmering slivers of light shower down on them, disappearing before they strike the ground.

Truman tumbles as the door shatters, vaulting forward, sliding down the other side of the bridge as the connection broke; the door disappearing with a clap of thunder.

He turns to see Verity weeping into her hands. Her eyes roll back in her head and she collapses onto the wood.

In the sky,
one moon
shines clear and bright.

* * *

Chapter 13

Verity’s unconscious form felt warm against his chest. He weaved through the stalks, his only thought—to get her inside.
 
His legs pumped hard and fast, burning with the pace.
 

The realization hit when he spied the orphanage’s roof.

How will I explain this?
His eyes dropped to her face.
Explain her?

He mentally rifled through a million explanations and lies. Panic expanded, filling his chest like a helium balloon.

Her color, which outlined her like a separate living, breathing being, pulsed a weak purple. Beneath, a red-hot core revealed her terror.

Verity’s chest heaved; even unconscious, her terror remained.

He reached the corn’s mouth, and cut across the barnyard.

Ram was waiting on the porch.

He shot out of his chair, a look of complete incomprehension on his face.

His dark eyes widened, taking in Verity’s provincial clothing. “How? No. It’s impossible.”

Truman gave him a terse nod. “I told you she was real.”

Emotions flickered through his eyes. “I’m going to tell Sunny to keep the kids out of the way…till…we figure out a story. The converted guest loft in the barn—True, take her there.”

“Brilliant. That’s why you’re the doc.”

Instead of smiling, Ram looked as if he might vomit. He rushed inside the orphanage without another word.

Truman sped toward the barn, barely breaking stride as he kicked the door open. He clambered up the stairs to the apartment, his nose wrinkling at the musty smell.