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Authors: Tessa Gratton
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family as me but always thought she was alone.
“I bind my feet, that my every step be for the blood land, my every dance weave life between the earth and myself.” Now there was Pan, to be shown the patterns of magic. To be healed.
“Finally, I bind my dreams.” The crows flapped their wings, pushing warm, sticky wind down onto me.
With the blood-letter, I broke the skin over my womb, where the roots of my magic grew. I took a finger and drew lines spilling out from it, a star of blood over my belly.
I said, “I bind myself.”
I was the center.
EIGHT
You’d built the farmhouse yourself, just after the First World War: a two-story wood and brick home with an attic and storm cellar, at the top of a wild hill. I settled quickly into the bedroom in the northwest corner, and from my window I could see the whole of the front yard, stretching untamed from the porch to the ring of oak trees crowning the hill. There was plenty of space for a garden. Vegetables and herbs, I thought. Perhaps some roses
.
The three of us ate dinner that evening, a meal I insisted on cooking. You already kept the kitchen tidy, and plenty of butter in the larder. I whipped up a goulash with the last of the paprika from my grandmother’s hoard, wrapped in an old handkerchief she’d had straight from her own mother. Both you and Gabriel ate until you nearly popped your buttons, and I remember thinking it was kind of you, regardless of how well you truly liked my food
.
We gathered in the parlor with hot applesauce and cream, me on the delicate sofa and you and Gabriel lounging on rugs near the fire. The space filled with warmth, and although I felt the sorrow and loneliness of losing my family still crouched in my heart, your gentle eyes and Gabriel’s crackling energy soothed it
.
“What do you want here, Evie?” Gabriel asked as he set aside his bowl and leaned back onto both his hands. In the firelight his slick hair glinted like oil
.
You touched his wrist with just a flick of your fingers, and he shrugged one shoulder. “She isn’t offended, Arthur,” he said
.
“No, I’m not.” I took in his relaxed posture, and the way you, too, seemed to have softened into the room, with your boots off and your back reclined against the arm of the sofa. “It’s your home, and of course you should know what I want.” I bent and unbuttoned the ankles of my shoes, slipping my feet out and tucking them up under me. You followed the motion with your eyes, and Gabriel grinned as he stretched like a cat
.
“He never told me what you wrote in your letter,” you said, finally
.
I spoke directly to you: “My older brother died in France, and my mother of a weak heart last year. Father vanished a month ago, and the authorities suspect he was robbed and murdered. I performed what magic I could to find him, and he is not to be found.” I sighed as prettily as possible. “There was nothing for me to do but pay his debts, which were few to my fortune, and seek work. I remembered Gabriel from a visit just after the war, that he’d mentioned living here in Kansas where there is always work for a strong man and land all around. A city, perhaps, would be better suited to a young girl needing a place, but he spoke of the prairie with such”—here my eyes strayed to Gabriel—“such hunger and pride, it invoked the first desire I’d felt since Father disappeared.”
Gabriel’s smile curled deeper and he leaned forward. “Creating desire is a particular skill of mine.”
His insinuation made my eyelashes flutter, and I focused on keeping my hands relaxed in my lap. I raised my chin and said, “My girlfriends and the headmistress of my school warned me of coming to two men, no matter how I insisted we were related. I indicated the relation was much closer than it is.” I had no idea if our mutually powerful blood suggestedthere was any truth in the claim, but it had worked with my would-be protectors in Chicago
.
You said with quiet
“I bind my feet, that my every step be for the blood land, my every dance weave life between the earth and myself.” Now there was Pan, to be shown the patterns of magic. To be healed.
“Finally, I bind my dreams.” The crows flapped their wings, pushing warm, sticky wind down onto me.
With the blood-letter, I broke the skin over my womb, where the roots of my magic grew. I took a finger and drew lines spilling out from it, a star of blood over my belly.
I said, “I bind myself.”
I was the center.
EIGHT
You’d built the farmhouse yourself, just after the First World War: a two-story wood and brick home with an attic and storm cellar, at the top of a wild hill. I settled quickly into the bedroom in the northwest corner, and from my window I could see the whole of the front yard, stretching untamed from the porch to the ring of oak trees crowning the hill. There was plenty of space for a garden. Vegetables and herbs, I thought. Perhaps some roses
.
The three of us ate dinner that evening, a meal I insisted on cooking. You already kept the kitchen tidy, and plenty of butter in the larder. I whipped up a goulash with the last of the paprika from my grandmother’s hoard, wrapped in an old handkerchief she’d had straight from her own mother. Both you and Gabriel ate until you nearly popped your buttons, and I remember thinking it was kind of you, regardless of how well you truly liked my food
.
We gathered in the parlor with hot applesauce and cream, me on the delicate sofa and you and Gabriel lounging on rugs near the fire. The space filled with warmth, and although I felt the sorrow and loneliness of losing my family still crouched in my heart, your gentle eyes and Gabriel’s crackling energy soothed it
.
“What do you want here, Evie?” Gabriel asked as he set aside his bowl and leaned back onto both his hands. In the firelight his slick hair glinted like oil
.
You touched his wrist with just a flick of your fingers, and he shrugged one shoulder. “She isn’t offended, Arthur,” he said
.
“No, I’m not.” I took in his relaxed posture, and the way you, too, seemed to have softened into the room, with your boots off and your back reclined against the arm of the sofa. “It’s your home, and of course you should know what I want.” I bent and unbuttoned the ankles of my shoes, slipping my feet out and tucking them up under me. You followed the motion with your eyes, and Gabriel grinned as he stretched like a cat
.
“He never told me what you wrote in your letter,” you said, finally
.
I spoke directly to you: “My older brother died in France, and my mother of a weak heart last year. Father vanished a month ago, and the authorities suspect he was robbed and murdered. I performed what magic I could to find him, and he is not to be found.” I sighed as prettily as possible. “There was nothing for me to do but pay his debts, which were few to my fortune, and seek work. I remembered Gabriel from a visit just after the war, that he’d mentioned living here in Kansas where there is always work for a strong man and land all around. A city, perhaps, would be better suited to a young girl needing a place, but he spoke of the prairie with such”—here my eyes strayed to Gabriel—“such hunger and pride, it invoked the first desire I’d felt since Father disappeared.”
Gabriel’s smile curled deeper and he leaned forward. “Creating desire is a particular skill of mine.”
His insinuation made my eyelashes flutter, and I focused on keeping my hands relaxed in my lap. I raised my chin and said, “My girlfriends and the headmistress of my school warned me of coming to two men, no matter how I insisted we were related. I indicated the relation was much closer than it is.” I had no idea if our mutually powerful blood suggestedthere was any truth in the claim, but it had worked with my would-be protectors in Chicago
.
You said with quiet
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