I leapt into the water, which was a cool relief from the day. I opened my eyes as I sank to the bottom. We were at a small tributary creek, which was deep in places but had a weaker flow. The current was lazier and better to swim in. I took in the world around me, the blue and green moss like an ornate rug of stars, without pattern, strewn over the dark brown rocks of the riverbed. Fat pink, silver, and white fish zinged around me. Small shelled things that looked like giant ants crawled on the rocks next to where I squatted, whilst I tried to stay under as long as I could. An eel slid past me, like a strip of ribbon on a breeze.
I shot up to the surface when my lungs began to burn. When I opened my eyes, the rest of them had entered the water.
“Feels fantastic,” called Wynne, on his back, eyes cast up to the canopy of kissing leaves and birds above. “Do you ever see wildcats here?”
“No,” Rowena assured him. “No bears or wolves come this close to the border either. Nothing scarier than a fox.”
I had opened my mouth to say that yes, we had seen wildcats, when I realized that those slinky bodies, their coiled muscles propelling them up and down trees with ease, had never been noticed by her. They were larger than wolves but silent and solitary predators, sleeping in branches with one eye open, looking for the unwitting deer, coney, and fox below. We must not have interested them, for they never did anything but blink their golden-green eyes at us.
As I closed my mouth, I caught Thane’s eyes on me and realized he treaded water next to me. But he did not see me see him at first, for his eyes were on my closing mouth.
When our gazes met, we both looked away quickly.
Then he whispered, “So there are wildcats here?”
Being this close to him was pure elation and also agonizing. He was so painfully perfect, the river water beading on his face, his eyelashes darker and thicker and forming into points around his eyes. His thick, brown curls were stuck to his head in arcs and swirls.
“Don’t tell my sister,” I answered. “I thought she had seen them too.”
He nodded. “I won’t say a word.”
That night, as I lay in bed next to my sleeping twin, our bodies exhausted by swimming and talking and laughing for hours, our minds exhilarated with our newfound friends, as I parsed out what my heart was doing inside my chest, I concluded I must be in love.
36
THEN: GAMES
We spent two summers like that. And Sheridan summers lingered, so it felt like a drawn-out seasonal gathering that extended from one day into the next. As long as we had chores done, my twin and I were allowed to roam free. Our mother knew the best thing she could do to prevent an eruption in our household was to keep me and my father far apart for as long as she could each day. His rages seemed to be more frequent with each season.
The six of us developed a strange camaraderie. While our father was an elder of the church, he was not as rich as their fathers were. But what Rowena and I lacked in coin, we made up for in knowing Nyossa. We showed them how to find the snails that had white-and-brown shells that changed to pink and red when warmed by a human hand. We pointed out lizards that blended into the tree trunks, white- and gray-spotted coneys, songbirds, foxes, and each kind of moss that glowed. We showed them which mushrooms, nuts, and berries were good to eat and which would give them a stomachache. We showed them fruit that only grew in the forest and not outside of it.
Ilsit never quite warmed to me, but she seemed to tolerate me for Rowena’s sake, having been unable to resist my sister’s sweetness.
The boys were easier to understand. I listened to them, a bland expression on my face, when they wanted to impress us. And I never let them cow me. In return they were mostly nice to me. Wynne and Kent liked to swagger and boast, both excited at their increasing size as young men. Sometimes Thane would act like that too, but mostly he asked me questions about the forest and blushed whenever he looked at me for too long as we entered or exited the waters.
Towards the end of that second summer, lines were eventually crossed, boundaries breached that could never be undone. My twin and I stepped entirely out of our childhood with the brush of another’s lips. For she too had a heart in love. We were all fourteen or fifteen, full to brimming with curiosity about ourselves, about our friends, and about sex. There was a new tension with every forest excursion that last moon.
Ilsit pretended to be disdainful whenever Wynne, the most daring of them, would say things meant to provoke the rest of us. Rowena adopted this disdain too but was kinder about it, glaring at Wynne with more warning than annoyance.
I remained silent, watching Kent swallow a grin, his eyes on my sister and Ilsit, as Thane flitted his eyes away from mine.
Hide-and-seek was played one day. I cannot remember who the seeker was, only that I was a hider. Thane found me wedged between two enormous trees that sat on the bank of the river, their eroded roots nearly covering me like a lattice.
“Hah!” he proclaimed, laughing when I hushed him. He slid down next to me and shoved me to one side where I was sitting on my rear, arms around my knees. The spot was barely big enough for the two of us, and he grew shy once his laughter had subsided.
We looked away from each other across the river into the green thick of the forest, his hot side pressed into mine.
“This ismyspot,” I said, wanting to break the silence.
“Well, I got bored in my spot,” he said, a smile in his voice.
I turned to look at him and almost gasped at how close his mouth was to mine. He smelled like grass and honeysuckle andboy. And I wanted him so much I thought I would die from it.
I was startled from my naked adoration by the sounds of my sister’s and Ilsit’s voices from the opposite bank. They were picking their way along a footpath that ran parallel to the river.
“Swimming?” Rowena was squealing. “No! Not here at least. The water’s rough here. It makes me too tired to swim.”
“Alright, well somewhere else! We can dip under if we hear voices!”
