Read Online The Kept by James Scott - Free Book Online Page B

men who had shot her and her family had razed their home. The closest trees had their branches shortened and twisted by the heat of the fire. The ice clinging to the bark had saved the forest, preserved the rest of the yard so that it appeared as though God himself had plucked the house from this world, as one would a blueberry from its bush. Elspeth noted the four posts that had been the entirety of the house she’d left on her first trip. The fire had made them its grave marker.
    The cold mud pulled her down, down into the embrace of the Devil. Her hand went to her chest, where her cross always resided, but all that met her fingers was a naked chain. She gave in, the faces of her children turning away from her, and when they turned back, they were as she’d found them some days ago, waxen and unmoving, fear and accusation stuck forever in their skin. She struck her knee on a stone in the mud as she yielded. Something rustled above her—the wings of a demon beating, flying down from the rafters, close to her. The heat burned her face and the only relief she could find lay in the mud and she surrendered, allowing the cooling powers to provide for her, knowing all the while that they were a gift of the Devil.
     
    C ALEB SHOOK HIS mother lightly. She groaned. He pulled the blanket over her bare shoulder. Even in the icy mud, her skin was hot. She’d bled through her bandages. Her eyes, glassy and unfocused, pointed in the direction of the house. His image of her rising, yawning, and stretching away the shotgun pellets he’d inflicted upon her, ready to take off after the men who’d murdered their family, was completely gone.
    She hadn’t done serious damage, merely opened a few wounds with exertion. Rivulets of sweat wiped the dirt away in thin stripes. He melted snow over the fire and used one of the clean rags to set about washing her. She’d lost weight, and it laid bare her veins and muscles. He started at her feet and worked his way up until he reached her thighs, then he worked inward from her arms. He removed what was left of her dress. As he did so, she called for his father in a feeble voice that cracked and turned to breath toward the end. The sound of his father’s name made him shake. His eyes averted, he even removed her muslin drawers, which were badly stained. He could smell them at arm’s length and added them to the fire. He blindly dabbed at her, and dunked the rag in the bucket, the scalding water forcing tears to his eyes, his skin prickling and he withdrew his clenched fist quickly, sending a wave of steaming water across the floor of the barn. The hay needed refreshing and the bedding needed cleaning, so he spread a blanket on the ground for her. To keep her warm while he worked, he dressed her in some of Jorah’s old work clothes that had hung on a peg near the horses, the buttons on a flannel shirt giving him greater access to her bandages than a dress could afford. He draped the wet sheets and quilt from the rafters over the fire, and the drops of water sizzled on the stone. Of all of this, he felt proud.
    He stared at the space where their home used to be. He heard them, his father’s high voice reading to them, the boys laughing, the girls arguing. There was nothing to mark where they’d been. He considered the other side of the hill, the four lumps that would remain there even though his father would no longer pull the weeds surrounding them or tend to the tidy field of grass.
    He crossed the yard. When the snow melted each spring, rocks would appear in the fields where before there had been none, like the earth had given birth to stone eggs. The large pile of cleared rocks formed a sizable hill, bigger under its wintery cover. During the summer, the loose rocks would provide housing for snakes and rodents alike, and Amos would sit in the tree with his hand-carved slingshot and hunt. He would send Caleb to collect his prizes.
    Caleb climbed the small hill, tricky with its uneven footing,