My gaze traced her form, the twisted features of her face, her torso arching against her ropes, surging away from the fire to no avail.
In the dark hole of her wide, screaming mouth, I felt an echo of myself.
She might be gone, fed to the pyre, but had another like her done this to me...answered my foolish call and taken a perverse thrill in cursing me?
I just want to disappear.
I closed my eyes in a tight, miserable blink at the echo of my words reverberating through me. Those damning words.
Why?Why had I said such a stupid thing?
Why had I flung those words out there into the world so carelessly, an offering to be greedily snatched up, turned and used against me like the sharp thrust of a blade to my heart.
I lifted my face to peer out the window, studying the night. My gaze flicked over the rutted road where snow and dirt mixed into a muddy mess.
Was a witch out there, delighting in my misery, in the mischief she had wrought?
Was she watching me even now?
I studied the brown buildings covered in velvety white. The torches jutting from the meetinghouse flickered in the air, whipped by wind and snow.
“I didn’t mean it,” I whispered. “Please.”
A dog appeared, trotting down the street with a purposeful air. The whistling wind ruffled his mottled, snow-dusted fur as he blithely continued on his way. I envied his purpose. He probably had a home and family waiting for him.
“I’ll find you,” I addressed her, my anonymous witch, the one who did this to me.
If it took me days, weeks, months, I would scour every inch of the woods and find her.
“Youwillfree me,” I vowed in a harder voice, determination fueling me, chasing away the cold.
Nowhere in my mind did I imagine this existence could last any longer than that.
No way could it be forever.
6
Birthday Cake
Day 99
The weeks rolled into months.
I lived in a fog as I settled into a rhythm.
It wasalmostnormal, this invisible existence. If I pretended. If I squinted very hard and looked out at the blurry, unfocused world, it resembled an ordinary life.
I slept. I woke. I washed. I ate. All the usual things.
Exceptevery time I reached into my bureau and donned a fresh set of clothes for the day, they remained neatly folded on the shelf as though they had never been touched, never removed at all—as though they did not shroud my body.
Exceptevery time I plucked the blue ribbon out of my bowl of pins on my dressing table and used it to tie back my hair, the ribbon remained in the bowl when I looked down again.
This was my curse.Magic.A diabolical and ruinous thing.
I did not spend every night in my bed. I didn’t have to, after all. There was no accountability. No expectation. No rules. No one to demand anything of me. Invisibility granted utter freedom. The freedom to go anywhere, to do anything. I went where I wanted. I didn’t have to be anywhere. I didn’t have tobeanything.
Most nights I stayed in my home, in my own bed, just down the hall from Da. But some nights I wandered. Some nights I stayed with Linnea.
