She stood abruptly, dusting her skirt and reaching for the shovel again. “I’ll finish here. Go see to Samuel.”
I fled, rather than see Jane cry.
Both Bad and Samuel looked like they’d died and been reanimated by a sorcerer of questionable skill. Bad—dotted with dried blood, patchworked with bandages and stitches—had crammed himself in bed between Samuel and the wall, and now slept with his chin propped adoringly on Samuel’s shoulder. Samuel’s skin was an unhealthy mushroomy color between white and yellow, and his breathing beneath the quilt stuttered and shivered.
His eyes opened to gummy slits when I perched on the bedside. Improbably, he smiled. “Hello, January.”
“Hello, Samuel.” My return smile was a timid, tremulous thing.
He extricated an arm and patted Bad’s side. “What did I tell you, eh? Bad is on your side.”
My smile sturdied. “Yes.”
“And,” he said more softly, “so am I.”
His eyes were steady, glowing with some sourceless warmth; looking into them was like holding my hands above a banked fireplace in February. I looked away before I said or did something stupid. “I’m sorry. For what happened. For what Havemeyer did to you.” Was my voice always that high-pitched?
Samuel shrugged, as if being tortured and kidnapped were a tiresome inconvenience. “But you will explain exactly what he was, of course, and what these doors are that so upset him, and how you got here without my daring rescue.” He was sliding out from beneath the quilt as he spoke, arranging himself against the pillows as though every inch of him were bruised.
“Daring rescue?”
“It was going to be spectacular,” he sighed mournfully. “A midnight raid—a rope through the window—a getaway on white horses—well, gray ponies—it would’ve been just like one of our story papers. All wasted.”
I laughed for the second time that evening. And then—haltingly, messily, fearing that Samuel would either laugh at me or pity me—I told him everything. I told him about the blue Door in the overgrown field; about my father and mother and how neither of them was dead or perhaps both of them were; about the New England Archaeological Society and the closing Doors and the dying world. Mr. Locke, keeping my father like a leashed hound and me like a caged bird. The Written, and the way certain willful persons are able to rewrite existence. And then I told him about the silver coin that became a knife, and showed him the words I’d written in my own flesh.
The skin beneath my bandages was pale and puckered with fresh scabs, like some injured lake creature that had washed ashore. Samuel touched the jagged curve of the J carved into my skin.
“You did not need rescuing, then, it seems,” he said, a wry twist in his smile. “Stregas rescue themselves in all the stories.”
“Stregas?”
“Witches,” he clarified.
“Oh.” Sure, I’d been hoping for something a little more complimentary but—he believed me, without even a flicker of doubt. Maybe all those years of sneaking pulpy monster stories when he was supposed to be manning the shop counter had rotted his brain just like his mother said they would. Maybe he just trusted me.
Samuel continued, speculatively. “They always end up alone in the stories—witches, I mean—living in the woods or mountains or locked in towers. I suppose it would take a brave man to love a witch, and men are mostly cowards.” He looked directly at me as he finished, with a kind of raised-chin boldness that said: I am not a coward.
I found I couldn’t say anything at all. Or even think, much.
After a moment he smiled again, gently, and said, “So these Society people. They will keep looking for you, won’t they? For the things you know, and the things you can do.”
“Yes, they will.” Jane’s voice came from behind me. She stood in the doorway, framed by the last red rays of sunlight, her mouth set in a grim line. Something about her reminded me of my father, and the way grief stooped his shoulders and carved lines on his face.
Jane moved stiffly to the water bucket to rinse her dirt-grimed arms, saying, “We need a plan, and a place to hide.” She patted herself dry. “I suggest Arcadia, the name your father gave me for a world hidden on the southern coast of Maine. It is inhospitable and inaccessible, or so I am given to understand, which makes it an excellent place to disappear. I know the way.” Jane’s voice was perfectly even, as if a hostile and alien world was a perfectly ordinary destination, like the bank or the post office.
“But surely we don’t need to—”
“January,” she interrupted, “we have no money, no place to live, no family. I am black in a nation that abhors blackness, foreign in a nation that abhors foreigners. And worst of all we are memorable—an African woman and an in-between girl with wild hair and a scarred arm.” She turned her hands palm up. “If the Society wants to find you, they will. And I doubt Mr. Havemeyer was the worst of them.”
Samuel shifted against his pillows. “But you are forgetting—Miss January is not defenseless. She could write you anything you pleased, it seems to me. A fortress. A door to Timbuktu, or Mars. An unfortunate accident for Mr. Locke.” He sounded rather hopeful about that last possibility; he had growled in a very Bad-like manner when I told him about Brattleboro.
A sour smile twisted Jane’s face. “Her powers are not unlimited, I am told.”
I felt a prickle of defensiveness, doused in shame. “No.” It came out slightly choked-sounding. “My father says word-working comes at a cost. I can’t just rip things up and stick them back together however I like.” I snuck a sidelong look at Samuel, my voice lowering. “I’m not much of a witch, I’m afraid.”
He twitched his hand so that it lay very near to mine on the blankets, our fingertips almost touching. “Good,” he whispered. “I’m not that brave.”
Jane cleared her throat rather markedly. “Now, getting there will be challenging. We have two hundred miles to cross without being recognized or followed, and not much money to do it with. I am afraid”—she smiled a tight, chill smile—“Miss Scaller will have to become accustomed to a rather different standard of living.”
