“You little bitch,” he said, voice cold, and reached forward to grab my neck once more. This time, I was certain, with the intent to kill me as quickly as possible.
I saw a figure above. Small and dark and darting. If it were my last image, I would have gladly welcomed it. The shadow took form and Lucy flew in through the hole in the roof. He had not seen her, still had his hands around my neck, but seeing me watching something turned his face upward. I willed her to listen, to follow her nature.
She could smell the blood. See it in the dark with her hawk eyes. She was fast. On his face in an instant. Scrabbling with her deadly claws. A talon in an eyeball. More blood. He began screaming, released me, and I shoved him, scrambling backward, putting distance between us.
My Lucy. She was safe. She had come. She was saving me. I felt a surge of love, watching her with ribbons of flesh in her claws.
Simeon, still screaming, reached up and grabbed her body—a talon stuck in his cheek, pulling it outward—and threw her, as hard as he could, against the near wall. A burst of plumage, a scrabbling, and herbody fell to the floor. A wing bent, feebly twitching. Contorted. A quivering. Then, stillness.
“Lucy,” I cried. But my voice did not work. It came out only as air.
Simeon turned back toward me, toward the noise I had made. I could not tell how much he could see. He was covered in his own blood. One of his eyeballs was distended. The muscle of his cheek showed through a rip in his skin. A monster on the outside that matched whatever was within.
“I will slay you, you pathetic, smelly cunt.”
“My cunt made me a mother,” I rasped.
I was still on the floor. Pushing backward. And he put his boot—sodden, rough—on my throat and stepped down. “I will end you and everyone in this foul, beggarly house. The worst kind of ruin. For each of your daughters. I will take you without mercy and—”
A loud crack. He collapsed. A straight fall to the floor. I could not see, could not make sense of it for a moment, until my vision cleared, and I saw Elin standing over him, a wooden post—a part of the damaged roof—in her hands.
“In resolving challenges one must look to the compass of justice,” she said, staring down at Simeon. She turned to me, breath shallow. “I heard screaming.”
Slowly, painfully, I pulled myself to sitting. Looked over at him. I do not think Simeon heard her or understood what had happened. I was reasonably sure—a spreading pool of blood, inert limbs, still lips—that he was dead.
Elin peered down at his body, eyes glistening. “He was not a gentleman.”
My throat, which pulsed, felt crushed, like a stalk of wheat that had been bent and mangled. “No,” I rasped. “No, he was not.”
I put my arms out and did my best to soften Elin’s fall. She had fainted.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I had never lifted Simeon in life, but in death, the bulk of him must have doubled—blood congealed to lead, skin shedding life and gaining solidity as it stiffened.
Elin and I managed him between us, down the dark hall. I had his feet and she his hands, and we lurched along. “Take care with the blood,” I told her. “Mind the carpet.”
“I’ll wrap his head in a cloth.” Her voice wavered. “Not like he can see.”
I waited while she fetched a rag—a fitting shroud. My fear was gone. My throat still hurt. “And you are untouchable,” I whispered, to the body.
When Elin returned, she had composed herself. “I found a suitable piece.” She bent to wrap the cloth around his head, taking care. Gentle hands. “Green suits him.”
When we finally managed to get Simeon downstairs, she said to me: “All things find their proper resolution. See? Already the rain has stopped.” She was right, though I attributed the shift more to our fickleclimate than any kind of cosmic approval. Simeon’s limbs, after all, were still dragging on the floor.
I put on a cloak and bid Elin to do the same. She waited with the body while I retrieved the one-wheeled wooden cart we used for the apple harvest. The plan had developed between us without words: I knew what to do, and Elin would follow. I might have marveled at her elasticity—the girl who would not dirty herself, the same young lady who insisted on an everlasting ballad of moral rectitude—except I, too, was moving forward with a kind of numbness. I felt no need to defend myself, even to the most vociferous inner critique.
When I stepped outside, I was stopped by the sight of the carriage. The horses stood, stamping, snorting clouds of breath into the air. I went over and laid a hand on the corded neck of the animal that was closer, willing it to be calm. It blinked, watching me with an oversized eye. Nervous. I stepped forward, without thinking, and laid my cheek on its neck.
Hugging the creature was the closest I could come, in that moment, to grieving Lucy, whose feathered body still lay on the cold floor upstairs. I wanted to feel the animal’s warmth, even if it were afraid of me. I wanted to soak in a bit of its life, and to offer, or feel, something akin to love.
The moment was soon over. The horse nickered, unhappy to be a stand-in. Or just unhappy, for it had not been cared for or ridden well. Working slowly, making what reassuring noises I was capable of—for my voice was raspy and my throat ached—I undid the fastenings on its harness, and removed the bridle. When he was free, he walked a few steps forward. I did the same for his mate.
I could have kept them, used them. Sold them. But they were Simeon’s horses and I needed to put a wide distance between them—however brown their eyes, however appealing the notion of their recuperation—and myself. Aiming to scare them away, I threw pebbles. Waved my arms. Frightened them until they moved at a steady trot down the drive.
All was dark in the cellar house. The hulking shape of the barrels indistinguishable from the dark air itself. I found the tools by touch. With the long-handled axe in one hand and the shovel in the other, I felt immediately better. My stomach surer. I placed them into the wheelbarrow, and went back to the house, willing my feet and hands to ignore the cold.
Elin and I loaded Simeon into the cart with difficulty. He did not fit well. His arms and legs flapped over the sides. The handles of the tools stuck up around him, like spikes he had been impaled upon. His covered head lolled back like a drunk man.
