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A Garden Full of Bad Things

The dog lives in the backyard of a yellow house. Beside his yellow house is a gray house, and behind the gray house is a garden. The garden is overgrown, and sends the perfume of flowers all up and down the street, and sometimes also the smell of sweet rot.

The dog is a little dog, white and twitchy, and he has been trained well. He sits on a stool in his backyard and watches the garden day and night. It isn’t his job. No one told him to do it, but he is a dog and has a sense of duty he can’t shake.

His humans bring him inside on occasion, but the dog will sit at the door and whine and howl and scratch and destroy the carpets until they let him back outside. He feels so guilty about this that it has given him chronic indigestion, for his humans are perfectly good humans and don’t deserve such disloyalty. See? Even now, they demonstrate their kindness. They are bringing him a bowl of the special kibble, prescribed by the veterinarian. It is supposed to be good for dogs with stomach problems. They set the bowl down beside the dog’s stool. They pat him on the head.

“I suppose he must really like it out here,” says one of the humans.

“Maybe it reminds him of his wild ancestors,” suggests the other.

Neither of them says what they’re thinking because they don’t want to hurt the dog’s feelings. What they are thinking is that ever since they moved into this house, the dog has been acting strangely. They wonder for a moment if the house is haunted, or if the soil is contaminated, or some other such thing that a dog might sense and a human cannot. Then they laugh to themselves and go back inside.

The dog’s heart breaks. He wants to go inside with them and lay his head on their feet and sleep on the foot of their bed. But he is a dog, and he has a duty. The gray house’s garden is not right. The gray house’s garden is full of bad things.

The gray house’s garden is full of flowers that whisper and growl and entice. They are angry flowers. They are greedy flowers. But most of all, they are hungry. It has been several days since their last meal, and the dog knows they will try again soon. As always, he will try and stop them. He never stops to think that he will fail, even though he always does. For he is a dog, and he is full of hope.

So the dog settles on his stool and waits.

The dog’s name is Rabbit.

*

Rabbit knows that sound. He has heard it many times. He jumps off his stool and races toward the fence of his yard. There are many layers of sound in a dog’s world, and sometimes they can be hard to pick apart. For example, right now the dog is hearing the spider crawl through the grass and the owl waking up in the woods behind his house. He can hear his humans breathing as they sleep and he can hear a raincloud turning over in the sky.

He can hear many things, but none of them are as loud as the sounds from the gray house’s garden. They are the sounds of immediate danger, so they are like thunder in Rabbit’s ears.

They are the sounds of the garden waking up. They are the sounds of the flowers whispering to each other, and calling to the footsteps on the sidewalk.

Rabbit slips under the fence, through a hole he dug long ago and has cleverly disguised with an empty flower pot. He sees the owner of the footsteps, and he whimpers.

It is a child. It is a boy in his pajamas and slippers, and he smells like old baseball gloves and dirty socks, which is paradise to Rabbit’s nose. But Rabbit is not distracted. Rabbit is a very good dog.

He rushes toward the boy, his nails clicking on the sidewalk. He puts himself directly in the boy’s path and barks.

The boy skids to a halt. His eyes are wild and white. His smile is uneven and loopy. “What do you want?” he asks Rabbit. “You’re in my way.”

Rabbit does everything he knows how to do. He runs back and forth between the boy and the gate that leads to the gray house’s garden. He growls at the gate. He runs at the boy growling, trying to push him away.

The boy gets angry. “Go away,” he says, and he jumps over Rabbit, and Rabbit despairs. If only he weren’t such a little dog. If only he were a Rottweiler or a German Shepherd or even a Labrador. But he is only a tiny white mutt of a dog with big pointy ears that gave him his name.

He chases after the boy. The boy’s hands are on the gate! Rabbit bites his pant leg and tugs, and tugs. The boy turns, growling, and his face has transformed. It is sick with the garden’s power.

“I have to go to them!” says the boy, and he kicks Rabbit away, hard.

Rabbit yelps. The wind is knocked out of him. He watches from the sidewalk as the boy opens the gate and slips inside. He hears the boy’s sigh of relief once his slippers hit the soft wet dirt. Rabbit knows the boy’s nose is not sensitive enough to detect the scent of bones that wafts up from the dirt when the boy steps on it. The boy’s ears are not sensitive enough to distinguish the squelch of dirt wet with water from the squelch of dirt wet with blood.

Rabbit howls and howls, but the flowers only laugh at him. The daffodils bobbing in clumps on either side of the gate, the morning glories winding around the gate’s iron spikes—they are all laughing at him.

You’re too late, they say. Their voices are ugly. Their petals form wicked mouths, and their tongues are dark. When they breathe, the air fills with the scents of hair and fingernails and screams. For to a dog, even a scream has a flavor. You’re too late, Rabbit.

Rabbit shakes. He hates it when they say that. For he is always too late, isn’t he? And too small, and not smart enough, apparently. It is enough to give a poor, simple mutt a vast inferiority complex.

So he sits and watches as the vines wrap around the boy’s legs, and pull him down. He watches as the boy sighs and smiles and laughs, because this is just what he wanted. He wanted to come to the flowers. He heard the flowers calling him, and their voices were so beautiful. Rabbit hears the boy whispering it to himself: “So beautiful. So beautiful. Hello. Hello.” The boy is talking to the flowers as if they are old friends.

Their leaves burrow into his skin, and still he smiles. Their bulbs bend over him like heads, and their black tongues unfurl, and still he laughs.

It isn’t until the orchids latch onto his face, smothering him, that he begins to scream.

Rabbit makes himself watch, though he does grant himself the small mercy of putting his paws over his ears.

The next day, Rabbit doesn’t eat. He noses at his kibble and sits under his stool. He does not deserve to sit on his favorite stool today. He can smell the boy’s body as the flowers bleed it and chew it and pull it slowly into the ground. He can hear the flowers celebrating, hissing and laughing and complimenting each other.

They are very loud this morning. Children are their favorite, after all. Children, Rabbit often hears them saying, are the sweetest meat.

Rabbit’s humans leave for work. Rabbit can no longer listen to the flowers gloat and belch and clean the blood from their petals. He is beside himself with shame. He wanders through his backyard, whimpering. The poor boy, he thinks. The poor boy with his baseball gloves and his smelly socks. What will his parents think?

At the edge of the backyard is a fence, and beyond that fence is a field of tall grasses and some woods. Rabbit digs under the fence and comes out into the field on the other side and howls quietly to himself. He will continue to wander forever, he thinks. He will wander away until he finds somewhere he can actually be useful, or perhaps until he dies. Perhaps, he thinks forlornly, dying would be best. A dog who cannot help humans is no dog at all.

But then he hears footsteps crashing through the grasses. The footsteps are coming from the direction of the woods. Rabbit thinks this is curious, for he has never heard anything in these woods except for foxes and birds and snails.

Then he sees the girl. She is as young as the dead boy was. She is wearing a dress that is torn and dirty. She has a wild face and wild eyes, and her hair is full of mud and twigs. She does not move like a human. She moves like an animal, darting this way and that.

She runs toward the gray house’s garden. She is confused. She does not know where she is going.

Rabbit follows her, barking. He does not stop to think how strange this girl looks, or that he has decided to wander off and die. For he is a dog, and when it comes right down to it, he will forget his own problems and do the right thing. He runs and barks and thinks that he will bite the girl’s leg if he has to. A bite from a small dog named Rabbit will be better than getting eaten by flowers.

But the girl stops. She stares at him. She kneels down in the dirt and begins to talk to him, but she does not talk like other humans do. She talks in growls and clicks like an animal, and Rabbit understands her perfectly. He sits back on his haunches and cannot help but wag his tail. This girl is a strange one. He likes this girl.

“You’re saying,” says the girl, clicking and growling, her eyes wide, “that the flowers in that garden eat people?”

“Yes,” says Rabbit, barking. It is a serious moment but he nevertheless has trouble stopping himself from licking her face. He has never talked with a human before, and it brings him a joy not unlike the joy that comes from getting his belly scratched. “Yes, that is what I’m saying. The flowers talk to people. They trick them inside, and then they eat them. They like children best of all.”

“How do you know this?”

“I hear them talking to each other.”

“Ah.” The girl nods. “I didn’t know dogs could understand flowers. But it makes sense.”

“Does it?”

“Of course. Dogs hear and smell and understand things much better than humans do, don’t they?”

“Much better indeed,” Rabbit says gravely.

The girl looks at Rabbit, and then looks around, and then pulls a thorn from her skirt. “Where are we? Could you please tell me?”

Rabbit does not understand. “What do you mean? This is the world. We are in it.”

“But it’s our world, isn’t it? Not theirs?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“This is the world where the sky is blue and the stars come out at night and things are all facing right-side up?”

Rabbit tilts his head. “Apparently the sky is blue. That’s what the humans say. And roses are red. They say that too.”

“Yes.” The girl’s face is strange now. “Roses are always red.”

Rabbit has been so distracted that he doesn’t notice it until now: “You smell funny. You smell not quite right.”

“I’ve been . . . away,” the girl says. She looks at the ground. She smells afraid. “I have been far away, in a place where the sky is black and the stars are falling and everything is upside-down.”

“Well, you are here now. My name is Rabbit.”

“A dog named Rabbit.” The girl frowns. “What nonsense. My name is Alice.”

When Alice says her name, Rabbit hears the flowers in the gray house’s garden stop gloating and boasting. He hears them turn their heads. He feels their silence and their fear.

That, he thinks, is odd. The flowers have never been afraid before.

“You should go home,” says Rabbit. He growls, because he thinks that will frighten her away. “It is not safe here. The garden, the flowers, they will hurt you. You are a child, and they will want to eat you. Go. Run away. Go now.”

Alice looks at the garden through her muddy hair. She looks angry. “They like children best of all, do they?”

Rabbit hears the flowers bending closer to listen. He hears them licking their lips. He hears the clack of their throats full of teeth. “Yes!” Rabbit is becoming afraid for Alice. He yaps and yips and runs around her feet in circles. “You must leave! Oh hurry, before it is too late!”

“Rabbit.” Alice picks him up. He stares into her dirty face. “I swore I would never go there again, once I got out this time. I swore it. But I think that I must. Because I think I know of a way to destroy this garden, these flowers that eat children, and if I know of a way, I must do it even if it scares me, mustn’t I?”

“What do you mean, go back there?” This time Rabbit does lick Alice’s face because that is the best way he knows to help a frightened human. “You mean to the upside-down world?”

“Yes. If I go back there, and I return with a great weapon, a weapon that can destroy that garden and those flowers, will you help me do it?”

Rabbit stops wagging his tail because he understands this to be a solemn moment. “I will.”

“It will be frightening,” Alice whispers. She is not looking at him. She is looking away, back at the woods. Rabbit is not sure if she is talking about fighting the flowers, or returning to the upside-down world. And he is not sure if she is actually all that frightened. Her emotions are confusing.

“All important things are frightening,” says Rabbit.

Alice nods. “Yes. Yes, you are of course quite right. Will you come with me and wait outside while I’m inside?”

That does not make sense to Rabbit, but he will of course follow her anywhere, this wild girl who talks like an animal, who smells like one and has been to an upside-down world. She seems more like a dog than a human, this Alice. Rabbit likes that. He trots beside her into the woods. They reach an ugly tree with a giant hole in its trunk. The air here smells strange, like Alice does. Rabbit puts his head on her bare feet and waits patiently while Alice cries beside the tree. She is scared, but she is also brave. It is a feeling Rabbit can understand.

Alice dries her tears on her muddy skirt. “This is the last time I will ever go back, ever,” she says, but Rabbit knows it is a lie. He can hear it in her voice. He can feel it in her heartbeat.

Alice climbs into the hole in the tree. She screams, and disappears. Rabbit sits in front of the tree, and whines, and waits.

When Alice comes back, she is even dirtier than before. She smells like salt water and metal and old stone. There are feathers in her hair, and her skirt has a belt now, and in the belt is a knife.

Rabbit jumps up and Alice holds him in her arms and shakes. She holds him too tightly, but Rabbit is happy to be useful again, and he is quiet until Alice stops shaking.

“Well?” says Rabbit. “Do you have it? Do you have the way to destroy the garden?”

“I have a way,” Alice says. Her voice is scratchy and tired and frightening. “It is probably not the way, and it might not be someone else’s way, but it is my way.”

“I understand. My way was to try and scare off the humans before they got inside the garden. But I don’t think that was the best way. But it was the Rabbit way.”

Alice looks at him with a funny expression on her face. “You are a strange dog.”

“And you are a strange child, but I like you.”

Alice smiles. It is the first time she has smiled in months, but not even Rabbit can know that.

“What is the great weapon?” Rabbit asks.

Alice sets him down and holds out her hand. In her hand is a seed. It is a large seed, and angry looking. It is black and red and spiky. It has left tiny bites on Alice’s palm.

“In some places,” Alice whispers, “there are flowers that are even worse than child-eating flowers.”

Rabbit whimpers. He senses that he is close to things that are too big and important for one small white dog to handle. “You mean, in the upside-down world?”

Alice nods. “And this is a seed of one of them. And we are to plant it in that garden, and let it grow and destroy the others.”

Rabbit is ecstatic. He jumps out of Alice’s arms and rolls around in the dirt. As usual, his joy is quick and gets the best of him. But then he thinks of something. “But if these flowers are even worse than child-eating flowers, and we plant this even worse flower, won’t the garden become even more dangerous?”

Alice looks back at the tree. She is still a child, but she seems much older than she was when Rabbit first met her. “No,” she says. “It will not. It will be a beautiful, tame garden for as long as this world is a world, and everyone will come to admire it, but it will never hurt anyone. We made a deal.”

Rabbit does not know who Alice is talking about. He does not want to know. He has no interest in this upside-down world that sounds so dangerous. He hopes there are no dogs there, but he somewhat vindictively hopes there are cats.

At the gate of the gray house’s garden, Rabbit is ready. He is growling to make himself feel fierce. Alice is beside him. They have a plan. Alice is beside him and her hand is on the gate’s latch, and in her other hand is the angry black-and-red seed.

The flowers are watching them. Their petal faces are watching the gate. They are hissing and spitting.  They are beckoning and laughing. Alice. Alice. Alice and Rabbit. Try it. Just try it. We are not afraid of a girl and a Rabbit.

But they are afraid. Rabbit can sense that.

Alice looks down at him. “Are you ready?”

Rabbit wags his tail, and Alice smiles but also looks sad.

“You are a good dog,” she says, and Rabbit’s happiness overwhelms him. He almost turns over to show Alice his belly and request a nice scratch. But then Alice is opening the gate, and they are running.

It is Alice’s job to plant the seed. It is Rabbit’s job to protect her while she plants it.

He runs as fast as his tiny white legs can carry him. Lilies snap at him. Vines wrap themselves around his legs. Tiger lilies throw themselves at him, petals crashing into the ground. The petals smell like blood, and they attach to his coat like suckers. They hurt, but Rabbit does not stop. They do not stop him for long, these shrieking flowers that smell like dead children. He is a small dog, and he is too fast. Too fast for them to touch and too small for them to catch.

Alice is digging. Petunias are swarming over her feet and up her legs, and their voices are small and high like children’s voices. Such a sweet girl, Alice is, they sing. Alice is crying, but she is brave. Alice slashes at vines with her knife. And Rabbit is tearing at the flowers with his teeth and his claws, ripping them to pieces. There is blood on his white coat, but he doesn’t mind. Helping is what a dog does best, and he is happy.

“There!” Alice cries, and slams her fist onto the dirt. She has planted the seed. Her hands are covered in blood and mud and thorns. She finds Rabbit. He is choking in a bed of violets. They fill his mouth and his nose and his ears, and he is afraid, but then he sees Alice. She is crying and ripping the flowers from him, and then he is in her arms. She is saying, “Good dog, such a very, very good dog,” and Rabbit is wagging his tail even though he is hurting. Alice is running out of the garden, and he is in her arms.

The flowers are screaming.

Rabbit opens his eyes and sees it happening. The garden is thrashing and crashing. The garden is drowning under the weight of something new.

They are roses.

They are red roses, bushes of them, towers of them, and they do not speak but they do have teeth. They smother the other flowers so they cannot breathe. They rip the other flowers from the ground and tear their roots to shreds. Even though it is dark, and even though Rabbit sees the world in gray and only knows what color his humans say things are, he knows that these roses are red. They are redder than blood. They are dripping red.

When it is finished, the roses poke their heads over the fence and whisper, Alice, dearest girl, dearest Alice. We did what you said. Now you do what you said. Dearest darling Alice.

“Alice.” Rabbit is whimpering. He wants to say thank you, but Alice is hugging him too tightly. She is setting him on the porch of his house. She is ringing the doorbell and knocking on the door. She is crying and plucking the thorns from Rabbit’s coat. He feels that she is afraid and sad, but also that she is happy.

He hears his humans inside. They are waking, they are hurrying down the stairs.

“Alice,” Rabbit tries to say again, “what did you say you would do? What deal did you make?”

But then the door is opening and his humans are exclaiming things. They are afraid for him. Rabbit knows he will be all right, and he tries to tell them this by licking their hands. They are calling the veterinarian, and they are carrying him to the car. Rabbit feels their love so deeply that he almost doesn’t see her:

Alice, climbing over the fence and running through the field toward the woods. He hears her crying and he hears her laughing. He feels it when she climbs inside the tree. He smells her fear when she screams, and he smells it when she jumps, and he understands now what Alice said she would do. He understands that this time, the jump is forever.

A Note From Your Curators

Dearest Curious Ones,

We, your Curators, hope this note finds you well — and hopefully not too confused about why we did not post a new story today. Rest assured, we have not been eaten alive by the brood of monsters kept at the bottom of the third floor closet, nor have we been transfixed by the whispering jewels in the kitchen cupboard. (And we would remind you, if you ever happen to visit our kitchen, do remember to plug your ears before opening the fifth cupboard on the right, and whatever you do, don’t eat anything you might see lying out on the countertops, for we are surprisingly fastidious, and it probably got there on its own.)

In fact, we are simply a bit delayed in returning home from an expedition celebrating the launch of Curator Trevayne’s first book, Coda. Said expedition took us down rivers and into caves, across precariously constructed bridges and through vast cities where the primary form of communication is music (as you can imagine, Curator Trevayne felt right at home here). There we lingered, shooting off fireworks that would put Gandalf’s to shame and trying on outrageously colored hair extensions while being fed cake by the natives.

But then, dear Curators. Oh, then . . .

What began as a celebration of Curator Trevayne’s success became something much more dangerous, an expedition of the direst magnitude, in fact. After much peril and evading of booby traps that would put a certain hatted archaeology professor to shame, we returned home to the Cabinet — safely, yes, just barely, but certainly not in time to prepare a story for you today.

For now, we are content to dust ourselves off and recover by the hearth, our pockets full of relics we can’t name for fear of activating them, and our minds bursting with darkly fantastical new stories. And we hope you’ll join us soon for a new story — a few days late but just as dark and delightful as you’ve come to expect.

Until then, readers,

The Curators

Quicksilver and the Stranger

Nobody in the town of Willow-on-the-River knew Quicksilver’s real name, or where she came from, or who her family was.

All they knew was that she was eleven years old (she proclaimed this, loudly and often, after outfoxing someone who should have known better), that she had an unbecoming piggish nose, and that she had hair as gray as a crone’s. So she was known as Quicksilver, for her hair, and for her cunning, for there had never been a girl with so slippery a nature. Many called her Quix for short. They hissed it like snakes when she managed to trick them, and laughed it wryly when she managed to trick others.

Quicksilver. Quixxx.

They knew to keep especial watch on sour apples and religious artifacts, for canny Quix had a weakness for the former and a fascination with the latter. They knew she lived on the rooftops when the weather was nice and in the ditches when it wasn’t, for then she could cover herself with mud and sticks and pretend to be a poor hapless urchin, and someone would take pity on her, and then before they knew it, she had picked their pockets and slipped away, hooting. (You might think the Riverlings would have learned, eventually, not to trust even the most pitiful-looking urchin, but the Riverlings are kind folk, and Quicksilver was a master of disguise.)

They knew she was all alone in the world, and that she was perfectly happy with that.

But then came a particular autumn day, when Quicksilver awoke to a shadow on her face and a whisper on the wind.

The shadow was far away—on the edge of town, while Quicksilver was high in the church belfry, sleeping barefoot and easy as a bird in a tree. But still she felt the shadow on her cheek like the touch of winter, and shivered in her sleep.

The whisper on the wind, though, was worse. It said her name, her real name, the name that nobody but she herself knew.

Anastazia, said the wind.

Quicksilver awoke, and nearly tumbled onto the roof.

Anastazia.

She blinked, rubbed her eyes, and searched the town below for the shadow she had felt. Or had it, and the voice, been only a dream?

Ah, no, they had not. For there, at the crooked bridge that marked the way into town, stood a hunched dark figure with bright red hair, and though it was far away, Quicksilver knew it was staring right at her.

 *

Quicksilver watched this dark stranger for a long time, as it hobbled into town and patted children on their heads and gave them treats. She watched as the stranger bartered for a space in the town marketplace and sat on a tall stool. And sat, and sat.

Riverlings began approaching the stranger, slowly. Quicksilver squinted at them from her perch on the belfry but couldn’t see anything worth seeing. She was too high up. She paced, tossing coins between her hands. She wanted to go and see what this figure was all about.

But she was afraid.

For ever since the stranger arrived, the voice on the wind, saying her name, had continued:

Anastazia. Anastazia.

No one but Quicksilver knew that was her true name, and yet she felt, somehow, that this voice on the wind belonged to the stranger down below, and that the stranger was here for her. She didn’t know what that meant, but it gave her a peculiar feeling in her stomach.

Finally, she was too curious to resist. She pounded her fist against the belfry’s stone, angry that this stranger had already gotten the best of her, making her do something she would rather not do. She clambered across the rooftops until she was right above the stranger, in the shadow of a teetering chimney.

A small crowd had begun to gather around the stranger, for the stranger was doing magic—street magic, of course, not true magic. True magic, Quicksilver knew, as did everyone, had long ago bled from the world. But this magic of card tricks and disappearing coins was useful enough—sleight of hand, was the term. Illusions, and misdirection. Quicksilver knew of such things, instinctively; she used them everyday. They were as much a part of her as her blood and her bones. But she had always wondered if she could do more than simple street tricks, something grander. Perhaps she could learn it here, from this magic-doing stranger. Perhaps, perhaps . . .

With a great, clumsy crash, not-so-canny Quix pitched off the roof and into the stranger’s lap. She had been leaning out too far from her chimney, and lost her footing.

The crowd roared with laughter. Never had they seen their own surefooted Quix have such a fall! So too did the dark stranger with the bright red hair—although the crowd’s laughter was loud, and the stranger’s laughter was silent, and wormed its way into Quicksilver’s throat like a bad smell. The stranger’s long bony fingers curled around Quicksilver’s dirty legs, quivering.

“Little girl,” said the stranger, “have you hurt yourself?”

Quicksilver leapt out of the stranger’s lap and dusted herself off.

“I never get hurt!” she said, and she sounded ferocious and angry, but inside she was more afraid than ever. She could not tell whether this stranger was man or woman. Its red hair was unnaturally bright, a color not found in Willow-on-the-River; its face was so old and lined that flaky white skin fell from the corners of its mouth and eyelids as it spoke.

“Fair enough.” The stranger shrugged and went back to its business of pulling jackrabbits out of old shoes, and whistling tunes that called birds to its arms like a scarecrow, covering the stranger head to finger.

The marketplace of Riverlings applauded and cheered, and tossed copper coins.

Jealous Quix paced and scowled and muttered insulting things under her breath that made a young mother nearby cover her children’s ears. But while Quicksilver muttered and scowled and paced, she also watched. She watched the stranger’s fingers, so frail and yet so sure, spinning tricks out of old cloths and rickety buckets and seemingly ordinary well water. She watched those crumbling white hands pull fresh, fully-grown flowers out of cracks in the marketplace cobblestones.

Once, the stranger snapped, and the crowd gasped, for the movement cut open the stranger’s right thumb in a tiny spray of blood. A shower of sparks rained down from the chimney overhead, and transformed in mid-air to cover everyone in white feathers.

Quicksilver plucked a feather from her shoulder and sniffed it. It smelled of burned things, and she was the only one to notice that the stranger’s blood dried almost as quickly as it appeared, and turned to ash that fell to the street.

The show lasted well into the night, and when the last sleepy child had been herded to bed, Quicksilver was alone with the stranger. For a long time, they stared at each other. The stranger fiddled with a necklace it wore, a dirty, knobby thing that might have once been gold.

Then, the stranger said quietly, “I’m better than you, little swindler. I am a magician. You are just a thief.”

Was that a cracking, splintering smile on the stranger’s puckered face? Was that a challenging gleam in the bleary, watery old eyes?

Proud Quix thought so. Just a thief, indeed. She put up her chin. “You are no magician. There is no magic left in the world. You’re just playing tricks.”

“Ah, but perhaps,” said the stranger, “I have not shown you all of my tricks, Anastazia.”

Hearing her name—not on the wind, but in a real, true voice—took Quicksilver’s breath away. She could not speak for a long time. Then she said, “Teach me.”

The stranger coughed up crusty yellow bits that spotted its collar. “Teach you what?”

Quicksilver frowned. She would have to say it, then; the stranger would make her. “How to do . . . magic . . . like you do.” Quicksilver blushed, to say such a silly thing.

The stranger was quiet for so long that Quicksilver thought perhaps the old rotting lump of a thing had died.

Then the stranger said, “I will do it, if you will answer my greatest riddle. I will even,” the stranger said, leaning closer, “give you three tries to do it. Three chances, one riddle, endless tricks.”

“Magic,” Quicksilver teased, proud of her own cleverness, “not tricks. Remember? You just said.”

The stranger seemed to smile. It looked painful, but pleased. “As you say.”

They slapped hands in agreement, and Quicksilver yawned. Even eleven-year-old master thieves are still eleven years old, and grow tired after such a long day. And Quicksilver had much to think about.

“Well,” she said, tossing her coins about impressively, “good night, then.”

The stranger grabbed her wrist, stopping her. It hurt. The necklace swung heavily from the stranger’s neck. On that neck, Quicksilver saw angry red marks where the necklace’s chain rested.

“But you must answer my riddle,” the stranger rumbled, its throat full of sickness. “Tonight is your first try.”

Quicksilver stamped her foot. “But I’m tired tonight! I will try tomorrow.”

“Tonight. I am impatient, and you should have known better than to agree to a bargain without first setting your own rules.”

The stranger had a point, and sly Quix had been the one outfoxed, for once. It was not a pleasant feeling.

“Fine.” She hopped on a small fence opposite the stranger and made an ugly face. “What is the riddle?”

The stranger spoke swiftly. “How do I know your true name, Anastazia?”

That was it? That was the riddle? Part of Quicksilver felt glad; that was not the mind-twisting riddle she had expected.

But another part of Quicksilver shivered and shook at the stranger’s voice, so hungry and old and dark.

A possible answer came to her mind—too easy an answer, but she was tired, and didn’t realize it. “You used your magic,” she said, “to find it in my mind.”

“Bah!” The stranger spat, shovering Quicksilver off her fence and to the ground. When the stranger moved, a stink followed it, a stink of unwashed skin and creaking houses. “Magic, to do such things? That was a stupid answer. You didn’t take any time to think about it.” The stranger glared runny yellow eyes at Quicksilver, rubbing its necklace with finger and thumb. “How disappointing.”

Quicksilver leapt to her feet, gray hair flying everywhere like a lion’s mane. If anyone else had insulted her like that, she would have done something truly nasty to them—but the stranger was truly nasty, so Quicksilver said, “Fine. Fine. I’ll try again tomorrow.”

“Two more chances,” the stranger growled as Quicksilver scrambled up the roof and away. “Two more chances, stupid thief. Tiny, stupid, precious thief.”

Quicksilver barely heard those last few words, but she did hear them, and thought them odd, and sat awake for a long time beside the cold, silent church bells, thinking.

 *

The next day was cold and pale. Quicksilver stole an old coat trimmed in fur from a traveler at the inn. She wrapped herself in it and sat on the roof above the stranger, watching another day of the stranger’s art—puppets moving on their lonesome, with no hands to guide them, and snow falling on the stranger out of a sunny sky. She watched the stranger pick pockets without ever moving from its stool, and saw a man so bewitched he thought the stranger was a beautiful woman, and said so, and planted a kiss on the stranger’s chalky white lips.

That made the crowd of Riverlings roar with laughter. They slapped knees and wiped away laughing tears, and led the poor confused man to the tavern for supper.

Quicksilver watched it all, focusing on the stranger’s bright red head, listening to the croaking voice that was neither man’s nor woman’s. She paid such close attention that her head hurt, and her eyes watered, and her body ached with stiffness.

Finally, Quicksilver jumped down, silent as a cat, and hurried to the stranger’s side.

The stranger counted copper coins, chuckling. They gleamed red in the light of the setting sun. The necklace the stranger wore also gleamed, despite its coat of filth.

“Well?” said the stranger, without looking up. “Do you have an answer for me, stupid thief?”

Stupid thief. Ah, but the stranger had said precious thief the night before, and the words had stirred something lonely and forgotten in Quicksilver’s hard little heart. At first she hadn’t realized what it was, and then, sometime during the night, she had started to wonder, and this whole day she had wondered, and now she knew. She knew. It had to be the answer, this wondrous, terrible thought.

“I do,” she said, and she smiled, and it was not the smile of outfoxing someone, but a real, honest smile. “You are one of my parents, my mother or my father, and you’ve come to find me at last.”

After the first answer, the stranger had been angry and disappointed. Now, the stranger seemed simply tired. Its shoulders slumped with sadness. The necklace it wore seemed to drag the stranger’s head close to the ground.

“No, child,” the stranger said at last, and when it breathed, the sound was like dead leaves blowing through a storm. “I am not either of your parents. Your parents left you at the doorstep of St. Agatha’s, and never looked back.”

Quicksilver remembered that place, the tiny convent with the dark roof and the darker rooms. She had run away from the silent, stern Sisters as soon as she was strong enough, but one thing the Sisters had taught her was the beauty of prayer and faith, and she had never forgotten it. The statue of St. Agatha, which Quicksilver kept in her pocket, was the only thing she had ever felt guilty about stealing.

She held it now, her fist tight around it in her coat.

She would not cry in front of this stranger, who looked so suddenly sad.

“You ugly thing,” Quicksilver said. “You ugly, horrible thing. You made me think you were . . . ”

The stranger blinked slowly at her. “Did I?”

Of course, the stranger had not made lonely Quix think anything. She had done it for herself, letting herself hope, letting herself wish for a family, for the first time in ages.

“One more chance,” the stranger said, after a moment. “One more chance, and then either we are done, or we are just beginning. So go. Sleep.”

To keep from crying, Quicksilver grabbed a fistful of dirt and flung it at the stranger’s face, and then raced up the rooftops, alone.

*

Quicksilver did not sleep, though she needed it, and it was a good thing, for her exhaustion allowed her to see things more clearly.

All the next day, she paced on the roof, and when the crowds came and went, and it was evening, and the stranger sat alone on its stool, scratching its bright red head, Quicksilver climbed down and stood tall, though she was more afraid than ever.

For she had found the answer to the stranger’s riddle.

The stranger raised tangled eyebrows. “Well? This is your last chance, thiefling. What is your answer?”

Quicksilver remembered all the times she had thought herself brave and clever before, and realized how silly that had been. She breathed in and out. She stared at the stranger’s necklace, instead of at the stranger’s eyes.

“You are me,” she said. “That is how you know my name.”

Though Quicksilver had spoken softly, the words seemed to ring in Willow-on-the-River’s tiny brown marketplace. She held her breath. She counted the seconds, trying to be patient.

At last, the stranger’s mouth grew into a smile that stretched its skin tight like worn leather, across yellowed teeth and black gums. Quicksilver looked for her own face in that folded-over skin and couldn’t find it, and that was the scariest thing of all.

“Aye, child,” said the stranger, “it is I. I am you.”

And as the stranger spoke, telling Quicksilver stories that only Quicksilver could know—stories of St. Agatha’s, of the other orphans poking fun at her head of thick gray hair, of her escape and her traveling on the road afterward—crafty Quix felt a bit like she was floating above her own body. She had thought it was the right answer, but still, to hear this proof out loud was another thing.

“But how?” she whispered.

At that, the stranger’s eyes turned sharp and narrow, lit up in a new way. “You wanted me to show you my magic.”

“Yes. I did.”

“And I said I would, if you answered my greatest riddle.”

Quicksilver drew her stolen coat tighter about her body. “We slapped hands on it.”

“Aye. Then so be it done, at last.” The stranger took a long, slow breath, and then, before Quicksilver knew what was happening, the stranger was on her feet, pressing her necklace into Quicksilver’s sweaty hands, breathing sour breath on Quicksilver’s wide-eyed face.

“Then have it,” this strange, red-headed Quicksilver said. She seemed sorry for something, but also joyous, and determined. “Have it, and go.”

“Go where?” Quicksilver started to say, but the necklace was growing hot in her hands, so hot that it burned her. She tried to drop it, but her hands would not come away. The necklace was melting into her skin; golden light swirled brightly around her.

Through it, Quicksilver saw the stranger melting away, sighing, her eyes closed. The stranger shed first her dark cloak, then her bright red hair, and then her skin itself, like a tired bird shedding old feathers. She was a shriveled husk of a thing. A skeleton. A mirage.

The gold in Quicksilver’s eyes became too thick to see anything else.

Quick-tongued Quix thought, “Funny, for a girl named Quicksilver to die in a sea of gold.”

But Quicksilver was not dead. Not that night.

Not ever, really.

But she did not know that yet.

*

When Quicksilver next opened her eyes, she sensed without even looking around that she was no longer in Willow-on-the-River, but somewhere entirely new.

She knew this because when she breathed, she nearly choked on the air. It stung her lungs and burned her insides. It was too thick, too full of energy, too different.

She did not know, in that moment, that she was breathing in air laced with magic.

She did not realize that the land she had found herself in was old, much older than the land of the kindly Riverfolk.

She did not understand why the people here sported hair in all manner of outlandish colors—blue as electric as storms, and green as bright as springtime, and red. Red as bright as a stranger’s hair.

Red as was Quicksilver’s hair, now.

She saw it in the reflection of a still pond. Somehow, this was the most unsettling thing of all, that her hair had lost its grey and was now this fiery red. For what is a person, without a name, and what kind of name is Quicksilver, for a girl with red hair?

“Why has my hair changed color?” she wondered. “And where has the necklace gone? That stranger’s necklace?” She paused, afraid, looking around at this world glowing with so many colors that her eyes hurt to look at it. “My necklace.”

She did not understand any of this.

But she would understand it soon.

Soon, she would understand that she had traveled to a time before her own, when magic still lived in the world and the people prayed to different gods.

Soon, she would begin traveling, as she had done before, and she would learn real magic, and the poor street tricks she had always performed to survive would seem like dusty memories in the corners of her mind.

Soon, she would take up her true name and become Anastazia once again, and everyone from the poorest thiefling to the richest king would come to her, seeking the cleverness of her magic.

And later, many lifetimes later, when much of the world had changed and grown dimmer, and much of its magic bled away, she would stumble upon a dirty, knobby necklace in the far north of the world. She would hold it and laugh, and be glad, for this meant that her story was both almost over and close to beginning again. Old Anastazia, cleverest witch, would put the necklace over her head, and she would not take it off, not for many years, not even when it rubbed sores on her chalky white skin.

And she would keep an eye out, in those frail days, for a small girl with limbs like a fox, nose like a pig, and hair grey as a crone’s in winter.

For, like the necklace she wore, Anastazia Quicksilver was a circle, and so was the world, and so was everything, though few ever realized it. It was a grand game, the thorniest of tricks, and no one played it better than she.

~*~

April is the Month of Tricks

In January, if you’ll recall, we shared with you a collection of not-so-sweet stories about cake. In February, love (in all its dark, oft-twisty forms) was our theme. And last month, the theme was luck — bad luck, good luck; luck on the seas and in the circus, luck of a special little girl and luck found waiting in an attic.

And what is the theme this month?

Pull up a chair, brave hearts, and gather ’round — but be mindful of where you sit, because this month, nothing may be what it seems. For this month, you see, the theme is tricks. Our stories, then, might be of something largely innocent — childish pranks and harmless fun — or something darker. Perhaps we shall tell stories of jokes gone wrong, of lies told and illusions spun, of riddles upon which rests the difference between life and death.

We hope you enjoy these tales — and that you come away wiser for having heard them (unlike, to be sure, many of the poor souls within the tales themselves).

Be watchful. Trust no one (except for us, of course). Listen.

For we have another month of stories to tell.

The Tin Man’s Price

Mama always says we should never hurt each other but Mama don’t know nothin.

She don’t know about all the marks on my chest.

She don’t know what Edie and I get up to in the attic these days.

She knows things are goin real swell for us all of a sudden but she don’t know why.

I think Pa knows, but he won’t tell.

I think it happened to Pa too.

*

Edie’s always wakin me up in the middle of the night. We’ve always been opposite of the other. Like Edie don’t sleep much and I can sleep through the end of the world, that’s what Mama says. And Edie eats enough for ten people and I eat like a bird. We’re opposites, Edie and me. Miss Vickers at school says sometimes that happens with twins. One of you’s this way and the other’s that-a-way, and together you make up one person.

I like Edie but I don’t like us being twins. It’s like we were supposed to be one person but we got split up inside Mama and now we’re two people. It’s almost like one of us shouldn’t be alive. Like one of us is a mistake.

So Edie wakes me up in the middle of the night and instead of goin out on the roof to play cards like usual, she says, Someone’s here, Tom. I know someone’s here.

Someone’s where? I say.

In the attic, she says.

How do you know?

I just got this feelin.

Edie’s always getting feelins. Sometimes I think her feelins are real and sometimes I think she’s lyin just cause she gets bored and thinks our town’s dull as mud.

How do you know someone’s there, Edie?

I just know, why you gotta be such an idiot?

Well I wish I wasn’t an idiot but everyone says I am so I shut up.

We go up to the attic. Pa keeps his old books up here, about geography and outer space and Egypt pyramids and irrigation. Sometimes Edie and me like to sit in the window and look through all these books. They’re hard but we read em anyway. We like to do somethin that Pa likes to do. We like to impress Pa. Pa don’t say much, and Mama says thank god almighty for that, why’d you want a chatterbox around anyway?

There ain’t no one up here Edie, I say, cause there ain’t. Just dust and boxes and old clothes and Pa’s books. Why you always playin tricks?

It ain’t no trick, says Edie. Her face looks stubborn, like Mama when she’s on a tear.

I know I heard something, she says. I felt it.

Cause I know Edie won’t shut up about this till we do it, I say, Okay let’s look around then, and we do. Through the dust and boxes and old clothes. Out the window and on the roof. Under the loose floorboard where we hide our best stuff. Nothin. Nobody.

I’m goin back to bed you scaredy-cat, I say.

Wait, says Edie.

She’s by the chest full of our old toys, the ones we’re too big for now. She pulls out a tall round tin covered with pictures and letters I can’t read cause they’re old and scratchy. It looks like the kinda thing you might could keep candy in.

I ain’t never seen this tin before. It ain’t one of our toys.

It must be heavy, cause Edie drops it and it hits her toe.

Ow, she says.

Then we heard it:

What’re you children doing up here.

What’re you children doing up here.

Why’d you wake me up.

Why’d you touch me.

Don’t touch me.

DON’T TOUCH ME.

We should run I guess but we’re too scared, so we just stand there starin at the tin. It’s shakin on the floor. It’s spinnin faster and faster. Then the lid pops off.

It stinks at first.

Then it smells good.

I don’t know what’s comin out of that tin, but it’s dark and it’s slimy like tar and it’s silky and slow like molasses. It looks kinda like a person but kinda not.

I don’t like it.

Hello, it says, and I guess it’s smilin but it’s hard to tell cause its face is made up of globs and cracks.

I apologize for yelling, it says, but you startled me you see.

Who are you? Edie says. I wanna slap her for bein so stupid. We should be runnin, Miss Smarty Pants, not talkin to it. And they say I’m the dumb one.

I have many names, it says. But you can call me Luck. Because that’s what I’m going to give you.

Good luck or bad luck? I say.

It looks at me. It blinks real slow. When it smiles, I feel sick to my stomach.

Good luck of course, it says.

Edie crosses her arms. Oh she thinks she’s so smart. She’s tryin to be like Pa.

How much? she says. We don’t got a lot of money here if that’s what you want.

I have no need for money, Luck says. All you have to do is follow my instructions. It’s quite simple.

What do you want us to do?

Luck blinks at Edie. It smacks its lips.

I want you to hurt your brother, it says.

Edie looks at me, at Luck, and back again.

What? I say. That’s nuts. Edie let’s get out of here.

How much do I have to hurt him? Edie says. And what’ll you give me for it?

We’ll start out small, says Luck. A little hurt for a little luck.

Edie’s thinkin fast. I see that look on her face. I got a math test tomorrow, she says. And I ain’t studied.

Luck smiles real big. A slap will do for that I think, he says.

Edie’s eyes light up.

Hang on, I say. But Edie’s fast. She runs over and slaps me across my face. It hurts. I get mad and smack her right back, and it knocks her to the floor.

Oh, Luck says. Oh oh oh.

Then Luck shakes, and then it’s not so slimy anymore. Like it figured out how to stand up straight. Now it looks more like a hole, just a hole in the attic where there should be wood and dust and boxes and now there’s nothing there instead, just a dark spot that almost looks like a person if you squint real hard.

That’s good, Luck says. Thank you, darling ones. Now go to bed and when you wake up tomorrow you’ll feel so much better than you did today.

I’ll pass my math test? says Edie. You promised I would.

You’ll make a perfect score, says Luck.

Then Edie says, And what about Tom? He hurt me, so he should get something too.

How clever of you, sweet girl, says Luck. Then it looks at me. What do you want, Tommy Tom Tom?

I don’t feel right. This don’t feel right. Edie’s got a red spot on her cheek. My cheek smarts where her hand hit it.

But I got a math test too. And I need even more help than Edie does.

Idiot Tom. Edie the smart one.

Same here, I say. Math test. I want a perfect score.

Luck smiles. Its mouth drips. Then you shall have it.

*

Our teachers don’t believe us both gettin perfect scores. Especially not me. They think we cheated so they’re makin me do my work on the board in front of everyone. And it’s like my hand isn’t my hand and my brain isn’t my brain, and soon there’s perfect algebra problems written all over that board. I didn’t have to erase once.

At home Edie and I show our tests to Mama and she says she’s so glad we finally started studyin like we should now if only we could peel potatoes faster, that’d be nice.

We show em to Pa too once he gets in from the fields.

He looks at us real strange.

How wonderful, he says.

We run upstairs before he says anything more. It’s like he knows, and I don’t want him to know. I got this feelin he’d make Luck leave if he found out.

I don’t want Luck to leave.

I like having Luck around.

I like it even though that night after Mama and Pa go to bed me and Edie go to the attic and pound on each other while Luck watches. Even though it leaves bruises all over Edie’s arms and all over my chest. Even though it hurts so much I almost pass out and Edie starts to cry.

We don’t stop. We’d do anything for Luck. We go for hours. We pound and bruise and slam and cut. It hurts it hurts but we don’t stop.

Very good, Luck says. It’s not as scary-lookin tonight. It looks more like a shadow than a blob or a hole. And shadows ain’t scary, they’re just places where the light don’t reach.

Luck runs its hands through our hair. It makes me feel even sicker but I don’t complain. I got a baseball game on Friday and I wanna win. Make a double play. Hit a grand slam. Not sit on the bench the whole time for once. And Edie, she’s got a softball game, and she wants a grand slam too. Stupid Edie, always wantin to be the same as me. Just cause we’re twins don’t mean we gotta be the same all the time.

I wanna hurt her again.

Hurt and ye shall receive, says Luck. It’s laughin so I guess somethin’s funny but I don’t know what it is.

*

One day Luck gets tired of watching us.

I want more, he says. I’m bored of you.

We could go into town, Edie says.

She’s cryin because I think I just broke her toe, but she won’t say nothin and neither will I. We won both our games this weekend. We’re gettin good grades for once. Amelia Simmons bought me a milkshake at lunch. Everybody’s lookin at us different, like we mean somethin. Like we ain’t just Tom and Edie those twins who live out on Hillside Farm, no sir. We’re Tom who gets hundreds on tests and Edie who hits grand slams.

 Town, Luck says.

He looks happy to hear that. He moves his head funny like a bird. And I’ve started callin him a he because he looks more like a man now. He’s still dark and fuzzy around the edges and sometimes when he blinks that tar drips out his eyelid but he’s mostly a man. He has a tall hat on and he’s skinnier even than me.

I should very much like to go to Town, Luck says.

So we take him.

And the first person we see, Luck points and says, That one. Hurt that one.

We look. It’s a girl from the junior high school walkin her dog. I’ve seen her before but I don’t know her name.

Edie frowns.

But it’s the middle of the day, she says. We can’t just go up and start punchin her. Someone’ll see.

Luck says, Not if we wait until she’s somewhere hidden.

I don’t like this, I say.

Oh. Oh no.

I didn’t mean to.

It just came out.

Luck, don’t be angry. Don’t be angry, Luck.

I didn’t mean it.

Luck looks at me long and hard. Edie looks at me even longer and harder.

Don’t ruin this for me you idiot, Edie says. Don’t make him mad. We need him.

I’m sorry, Luck, I say. I’ll do it. We’ll do it.

You had better, says Luck. Or I’ll go somewhere else where my gifts are appreciated and then where you will be?

You’ll be back in the rotten no-good place you came from, Edie says to me. You’ll go back to stupid bad-grades on-the-bench idiot Tom. Livin on a farm. Goin nowhere. Is that what you want? Is that you want for us Tom?

Tom, Luck says real soft. Tommy Tom Tom.

No, I say. That’s not what I want.

So we follow the junior high girl through town and all the way to Thistledown Road, where it’s quiet and the grass is high on either side.

We chase her down. She starts screamin and we run even faster. She sets her dog on us and we dodge and the dog runs right into Luck’s open arms and I don’t see what happens to the dog after that.

I don’t want to either.

We’re runnin faster than we’ve ever run before.

Isn’t this great Tom? Edie says. She’s laughin her head off. We’re almost flyin, she says. We’re like superheroes.

Ain’t nothin hero about it. Luck is right on our heels. I think Luck’s helpin us run this fast, tell the truth.

It ain’t a good fast.

It’s like runnin from somethin in a bad dream.

I guess it’s like what the junior high girl feels with us gettin closer and closer. We reach for her arms. We grab em. We pull hard.

It ain’t her fault she can’t outrun us. She don’t have Luck on her side.

*

We get home and eat dinner and go upstairs without sayin a word to nobody. Mama don’t notice cause she ran into Mrs. Jackson at the supermarket and there’s a whole scandal about Mrs. Jackson’s son runnin off to the city or somesuch and Mama’s happy as a clam about it. Finally somethin’s happenin, she says, in this dull as mud town.

Pa watches me and Edie from across the table.

I don’t like him lookin at me.

It’s like he knows.

It’s like he saw us hit that girl. Just the one time is all it took for Luck to shiver and shake and roll around on the ground like he got an electric shock. When he stood back up I could see his eyes real clear for the first time. They were dark and didn’t have no white around em.

I don’t like Luck’s eyes.

Edie stood there twistin her hands.

Oh golly Luck, she said, we shouldn’t’a done that. We shouldn’t’a hurt that girl. She’ll tell on us.

She didn’t see you, said Luck. He smoothed down his coat. He dusted off his tall hat. He kicked dirt off his boots. All she saw, he said, was her fear.

Then he took our hands and led us home.

And now we’re sittin here across from Pa tryin to choke down cornbread and I swear he knows what we’ve done.

I almost say somethin. I can’t help it. This ain’t right.

It ain’t right it ain’t right.

IT AIN’T RIGHT IT AIN’T—

Edie kicks me under the table.

Stupid Tom. Stupid idiot Tom.

I shut up. I don’t say nothin.

I ain’t stupid idiot Tom with the smart sister no more. Not with Luck around.

So I don’t act like it.

*

At first when I wake up that night I think it’s Edie comin to get me cause Luck said when he brought us home before dinner, he said, Darling children I want you to come up and see me tonight.

But we just hurt that girl for you, I said. Ain’t that enough for today?

Luck touched my arm. He squeezed tight till I couldn’t breathe.

It’s never enough, he said.

But it ain’t Edie wakin me up. It’s Pa.

Hurry, he says. Follow me.

Where’re we goin?

To the attic.

I stop cold. Why?

Cause I know what’s goin on and it’s gonna stop tonight.

Pa, ain’t nothin—

I ain’t an idiot Tom and you ain’t either.

But I am an idiot, I say. Ain’t no use lyin. I ain’t a good liar. Edie’s the one who’s good at lyin.

I need Luck, I say. We’re at the attic door. Pa’s holdin the cross from above the supper table like a gun.

I ain’t no good without him, I say.

I’m cryin.

No you got that wrong, Pa says.

He leans down so I can see him. His face got criss-crossed lines all over it. He looks tired but his eyes don’t.

You’re a good boy, Pa says. He holds me tight.

Where’s Edie?

She ain’t comin with us.

Why?

Cause she ain’t strong enough. Ain’t her fault. You could’a been the weak one just as easy.

I’m the mistake twin, I say. I’m still cryin cause that’s what idiots do. I shouldn’t be alive.

That’s right, says a voice.

It’s Luck.

You shouldn’t be alive, he says.

The attic door flies open.

Pa holds out his cross in front of us. He’s got it in one hand and me in the other. He rushes into the attic.

Somethin’s screamin:

You again.

You you you.

Not again.

Get that away from me.

GET IT AWAY.

PUT IT DOWN.

No, Pa says. I ain’t puttin it down.

He grabs that heavy tin Edie dropped, the one Luck lived inside. It’s so heavy Pa can barely lift it. Maybe with two hands he could lift it but he can’t let go of that cross. I know that without even askin.

Tom, he says, help me get it outside.

So much screamin and so much wind. Books and clothes and boxes flyin all over the attic. There’s a kind of dark in here so thick it’s like drinkin cement.

But we lift it together, me and Pa, and we get it outside.

Luck follows us, and there’s dirt flyin in our eyes and the ground’s shakin under our feet but if I look out into the fields it’s calm like springtime. It’s a good thing we didn’t stay in the attic. We might’ve brought the whole house down.

I guess Pa knows that.

How’d you know Pa? I say. How’d you know what we done?

It happened to me too. He has to shout it cause Luck is screamin nasty words so loud I cain’t hardly think.

When? I say.

When I was a boy. Luck found me too.

You should’a gotten rid of it, I say. So me and Edie couldn’t find it. This tin, we found it with our toys.

That’s the thing, Pa says.

He looks at me.

I did get rid of it, Tom.

TOM. TOM. TOMMY TOM TOM.

WHERE WILL YOU BE WITHOUT ME TOM.

Don’t listen, Pa says, real calm.

We’re by the creek now. He’s got the tin in one hand and the cross in the other and he’s tryin to bring em together like magnets that just won’t go. There’s sweat on his forehead and his muscles are big like mine’ll never be, I just know it.

YOU’RE RIGHT TOM, says Luck.

He don’t look like a man no more. He’s all kinds of slime and glob. He’s crawlin on the ground. His hat ain’t a hat no more. It’s just a tall tall head.

YOU’LL NEVER BE AS STRONG AS YOUR PA.

YOU’RE NOTHING WITHOUT ME.

YOUR SISTER COULD MAYBE DO IT. SHE’S SMART ENOUGH. SHE’S PRETTY ENOUGH. SHE COULD MAKE IT WITHOUT ME.

Don’t listen to it, says Pa. He’s sweatin hard. He cain’t hardly breathe. It ain’t nothin but tricks and lies, he says. Luck ain’t real. Luck don’t last.

DON’T LISTEN TO IT, Luck says. He drips black on my feet. He’s real close now. DON’T LISTEN TO IT.

I NEED YOU AND YOU NEED ME.

WITHOUT ME YOU’RE NOTHING.

Then Pa says, Okay Tom. Okay now.

And I say to Luck, You got that backwards. And I’m cryin but I just don’t care.

And Pa slams his hands together, cross to tin.

And Luck shrinks into a smokin black piece of somethin burnt.

And flies into the tin.

And the lid slams closed.

*

With Luck gone everything’s quiet again. There’s crickets in the grass and a coyote out somewhere by the foothills. And there’s me and Pa starin at the tin on the ground like it’s this thing you don’t want to touch cause if you do it’ll blow you to bits.

What’ll we do with it? I say.

What’ll we do without it? What’ll we do without Luck? That’s the question I really feel like askin but I know I probably shouldn’t. I think of all the things I done. I wonder if Pa done those things too when he was a boy. I wonder if anybody ever called him idiot or thought he was the dumb one.

After a while Pa says, We’ll bury it. Far from here. Farther’n’ I did the first time. Deeper too.

We’re walkin back to the house now, me and Pa. We grab two shovels from the barn.

Me and Pa.

Not Edie. Not Mama. And Pa’s lookin at me like I ain’t a boy no more. Real proud, he looks like.

I bet you didn’t count on that did you Luck? I bet you didn’t see that comin.

You thought I was nothin without you.

You was wrong.

I sling the shovel on my shoulder just like Pa does.

I liked having Luck around, I say. It was nice.

I know, he says. I did too.

What’ll we do without it? What if we never get it again?

 There. I said it. I know it’s shameful but I said it.

Well, he says. Well. Then he says, We’ll go to sleep.

We’ll wake up in the mornin, he says. And then we’ll get back to work.

~*~