The Curiosities Page 9

  [3]I thought he was a heathen who hated water. Everyone else thought he was just a bully, until we were in sixth grade and Juliet Banks decided he was beautiful. She looked up his name in a baby-name book and told all of us, “It means strong-willed, so of course he can be difficult.” Her lip gloss and eyeliner made her look older, and she started wearing real bras like the grown-ups wore, that she said her mama bought her at the mall. Soon all our friends were begging for push-ups and tinted lip gloss, and I was alone in my jeans and training bra thinking Tiergan was a dick.

  It became a game. I’d creep into the woods after a rain, toes quiet in my sneakers, hair all pulled back to avoid snagging in the thin pine needles. The best puddles were along the hiking trails, since most of the forest floor was covered by years’ worth of soft, rotting needles and leaves. The air smelled better than peach cobbler, all clean and fresh and alive with rain, electricity, pine resin. If I was lucky, I’d find a boulder off the mountain, pocketed with tiny, fresh water circles. I’d climb up and sit cross-legged in front of the best one, surrounded by cool, damp air and the pointed tips of the trees. Tiergan would have to get off his bike and come up on his own, get his hands all dirty against the rocks. He’d glare at me and reach down to scoop all the water out of my puddle.

  [4]Once, when I’d just turned fifteen, I yelled after him, “What’s wrong with you?”

  His bike skidded to a halt and he didn’t look back. From my position on the boulder I could see the top of his head, the swirl of his cowlick. I didn’t think he was very pretty like stupid Juliet Banks.

  “My mother drowned in a puddle,” he finally said before taking off.

  Which I knew was a gee-dee lie. His mama ran off with a professor from St. Mary’s. Everybody knew that.

  I stopped playing our game. There were puddles in town, in my own backyard. But in town they got filmed over with oil, and that was all shiny and rainbowed, but you couldn’t see the other world in them, couldn’t imagine falling through to find your other self. And in my backyard, Daddy was too near.

  [5]At school, in the cafeteria, I caught Tiergan watching me from his table with the other freshman who’d made the football team. Or rather, I caught him looking through me like I was as transparent as water. I flipped him off, which Juliet and Tabitha noticed. “Oh my God, Iz, what are you thinking! Does he like you? Oh my God!” They went on and on while I stared at Tiergan Fitch, fluttering their hands and begging for the scoop on how we knew each other. I told them he pushed me into a puddle once when we were kids.

  That afternoon it stormed so hard we all ended up in the school basement in case of microbursts. On the way home I veered immediately into his woods and ran so hard down the hiking trail my footprints made fresh little puddles in the mud.

  A half mile in, a huge puddle—more like a tiny lake—cut across the track. I fell to my knees beside it, ignoring the cold mud that squished against my socks and the hem of my skirt. I froze. The surface of the water was perfect. Still as glass and so wide I could see the whole gray sky with its leftover waves of clouds. The tips of pine trees poked against the edges like a ruffled border. I panted from my run and was overwhelmed by the scent of resin and rain.

  I leaned over, and there I was: red-cheeked, hair falling out around my face, hands pressed to my chest where my heart beat a hundred times too fast.

  Something under my reflection moved. Another face like mine, with huge, round eyes. But no mouth. In its eyes were secrets. I darted out my hand to grab at it. Instead it grabbed my wrist and tugged.

  I fell in, all of me collapsing into the water, and it was deep—oh, so deep. Tiny hands grasped at me, and I whirled around, not struggling. It was dark here, black like a cave, and the water clear and clean as rain. Light spilled down from overhead, from the puddle.

  Eyes surrounded me. Each pair like tiny caves themselves. I couldn’t breathe, and the water was freezing. But I wasn’t afraid. Their secrets pressed at me, whispered through the rainwater, and I stared at them, at the hundreds, the thousands of them. I opened my mouth to reply, to tell them my own secret.

  [6]Water poured into my mouth. I jerked, flailing back, kicked for the surface, but they were above me now, too, with their huge eyes. My lungs spasmed, my stomach, my throat, all begging for air. I reached out, grasping with my hands, and the things slid smooth cheeks and cool fingers against me. I could hardly see them anymore, the weight of the water in my lungs and stomach dragging me down.

  Something hard knocked into my shoulder. I grabbed at it. Rough wood. I circled my hands around it and felt myself rising up.

  The creatures whispered their silent, rainy secrets after me, scratching my ears, but I clung to the wood and was pulled up, inch by inch, until my head broke the surface and hands tugged under my arms. My fingers dug at the mud and I coughed and choked, tears hot on my face. I rolled away from the puddle, puking out all the dark rainwater.

  On my back, I opened my eyes. The sky was blue as the last of the clouds faded. Birdsong pinged and rang all around, and I could hear the slow drip of water off the pine needles.

  And there was Tiergan Fitch, leaning against his staff with his mouth pinched and eyes worried. “The rain washes too many secrets away,” he said. “It isn’t good where they collect.”

  He crouched beside me and helped me sit up. I didn’t even mind his warm hands on my back.

  THE BONE-TENDER

  by Brenna Yovanoff

  So I said before, in my introduction to “Date with a Dragon Slayer,” that I would lie to you and tell you I wrote that story. Well, guess what. [1]I also wrote this one. —Maggie

  Magical powers frighten me. This is a story about that. No matter how benevolent or valuable a superpower seems, I can’t help thinking that this is not going to end well for someone. Which is probably why I write a lot of horror stories. —Brenna

  When Brandon Rowe was eight years old, he hit a squirrel with a rock and broke its back. I know because I was standing on the other side of the fence, watching.

  After he went inside, I climbed into his backyard and crouched over the squirrel. I petted it. Its fur was soft and felt like the collar on my mom’s winter coat.

  When I carried it home wrapped in my shirt, my mom told me not to touch it, it was dirty and I’d get a bad disease. My sister Rosie, who was in eighth grade, helped me make a bed for it with a shoebox and some rags. When I picked the squirrel up to set it in the box, it looked at me with one shoe-black eye and made a noise like a rusty can opener, but it didn’t move. Rosie showed me how to give it water from a plastic dropper. Then she took me in the bathroom and made me wash my hands.

  She said, “It might die tonight, okay? If that happens, don’t be scared. Just come get me.”

  I was scared, though. The squirrel was little and soft. The room smelled like Dial soap, and I tried not to cry.

  “Oh, Noah, don’t be sad. Things die from shock sometimes, is all.”

  I spent all night lying on my floor next to the box and watching the squirrel breathe, putting my hands on its back, feeling the places where the bones didn’t line up. The squirrel twitched and shook. Then it stayed still.

  [2]I was seven. What did I know? In the morning the squirrel was still breathing, and [3]when it climbed out of the box and whisked in circles around my room, I was the only one who wasn’t surprised.

  . . .

  When Brandon was twelve, he broke my best friend Milo’s pinky finger. We were down at the community pool, and Brandon pushed Milo off the diving board and jumped in after him, even though Milo was still splashing around like a drowning cat and couldn’t get out of the way.

  [4]Brandon crashed down on top of him, and when Milo struggled back up to the surface, the look on his face was all shock and white-lipped pain.

  After Milo paddled awkwardly over to the side, we sat on the edge of pool and I studied the damage while Brandon stood over us, calling us a couple of whiny little gaywads for holding hands. I looked for guilt or
pity in his face but didn’t see it. His grin was so wide it made me feel uneasy and like the world was a pretty out-of-control place. Milo’s hand was swelled-up, already turning purple.

  “Hold still,” I said, and Milo nodded and squeezed his eyes shut.

  “What are you going to do?” he whispered. His face was so pale he looked gray.

  “Nothing. Just hold still.”

  The hardest part was setting the broken ends back together. Milo kept his eyes closed, swaying a little on the edge of the pool. I held his hand between both of mine and waited for the rush of electricity that would mean it was working.

  “What a couple of queermos,” said Brandon, and I tried to tell myself it was because he was secretly sorry, but I didn’t believe it.

  . . .

  When Brandon was fifteen, we had PE together. The class was supposed to be for freshmen, but he’d skipped so many times the year before that he had to take it over.

  On the second day, he hit Melody Solomon in the face with the volleyball. He did act sorry that time, but only because she looked like a cheerleader. He wouldn’t have cared if the same thing had happened to one of the fat girls, but Melody had shiny hair, nice legs, and a very good tan.

  When he tried to say he was sorry, she twisted away from him, cupping her hands over her face.

  “Here, let me see,” I said, reaching for her shoulder. She jumped like I’d startled her, but didn’t recoil the way she had with Brandon.

  When she took her hands away from her face, blood was running down over her bottom lip and dripping off her chin.

  “Is it okay if I touch it?”

  She didn’t look at all sure about that, but she nodded.

  [5]I ran my fingers along the bridge of her nose, feeling for the break. It was high up and to one side. When I pressed the cartilage back into place and held it there, Melody winced and tears leaked out of her eyes. She was watching me with this numb, pleading look that reminded me of the squirrel and how it stared at me defenselessly, like it didn’t have a choice. Her eyes were gray, with pale starbursts around the pupils, like tiny metallic suns.

  Behind me, Brandon made a thick, disgusted noise. “Oh, gross—don’t let Noah touch you or you’ll get his nasty-ass stink all over you!”

  And Melody flinched and pulled away. Her expression was frightened, almost lost, and I could still feel tingling sensation in my fingertips.

  Brandon laughed and pushed me hard between the shoulder blades. “You don’t know where he’s been, Mel. I’ve seen him out on Garner Street, playing with the roadkill.”

  And it was one afternoon, hot and dismal, and one panicked, shuddering [6]dog, but it didn’t matter. For the rest of the year everyone called me skunk-boy. Melody’s nose healed straight and perfect, but she never looked me in the face again.

  . . .

  When Brandon was seventeen, he shattered his right ankle in a car accident. He also broke his collarbone and fractured his left femur. It happened the week before soccer started, and the accident was pretty much the end of his season—maybe the end of all his seasons.

  He missed a lot of school, and being the good neighbor she is, my mom volunteered me to get his homework assignments and bring them over to his house.

  I hadn’t been in his house since I was a little kid, and the few memories I had of the Rowe place weren’t good memories. When I came into the living room, Brandon was sitting in his rented wheelchair in front of the TV, watching like he wasn’t really seeing it.

  I dropped the stack of make-up work on the coffee table and he didn’t look up. I was used to him vicious and laughing, but now he just looked resigned. He looked like he hadn’t been sleeping.

  “The project for history is a research paper. Give me your list of books by Thursday and I’ll get them from the library.”

  When he still didn’t say anything, I turned and started for the door.

  [7]“Are you going to do your crazy-voodoo laying-on-of-hands thing?” Brandon’s voice was low and flat, and when I turned around again, he was still looking at the TV. “I mean, isn’t that what you do?”

  I didn’t answer. There were plenty of things I should have said—excuse me? or I don’t know what you’re talking about—but the truth was, I kind of wanted to.

  His injuries were bad, worse than anything I’d ever seen—worse than dying squirrels or skinny, shivering best friends or beautiful girls in PE. I was halfcrazy to see what would happen if I tried my touch on a really bad break, one that might never heal right, even with pins and screws.

  Brandon sat in his chair, looking up at me, and my hands felt hot. My skin was singing with adrenaline, a wild electricity that couldn’t wait to jolt out of my fingers and into bone. I knew, without a doubt, that I could do it—knew with ninety-nine percent certainty. Except.

  Except, I didn’t feel pity when I looked at him. Except, I’d spent more than half my life mending bones and now, in the tips of my fingers, something didn’t feel right. My hands were hot.

  Brandon watched me without saying anything, and then his face changed. His stare turned hopeless and painful, like he knew there was cruelty sparking off my fingertips, burning in my blood. He could see it on me before I was even sure that it was there.

  “Jesus, Noah,” he whispered, and his voice sounded tired and almost frightened.

  [8]“You don’t want me to touch you,” I said. “It wouldn’t work out.”

  DEATH-SHIP

  by Tessa Gratton

  This was the first longish story I wrote in one sitting. I’d had this idea of the bride waiting at the burial mound for the year anniversary of her husband’s death humming behind my eyes for a few weeks, and on my day to post, I sat down and started telling the story. I’m not sure I looked away or stopped typing for a moment until the final word was typed. ALSO there is no magic. Did you notice? [1]No magic. No monsters. I can do it. —Tessa

  You died far away from me, and I didn’t know.

  When Kitta comes to tell me, I am [2]scraping seal hide to make into mittens for you, humming old lullabies and dreaming of your ship’s prow cutting through the whale-road.

  “Geira,” she calls, waving her hand.

  I glance up from my work and shift my feet on the sand. To my right the ocean sighs, and to my left the land rises in rocky bluffs. I hear cormorants shrieking and the low of a cow, the distant song of Hrof’s shepherd, and from the edges of town the clang of iron-smithery. The sun is warm and high in the sky, and clouds trail peacefully down to the horizon.

  And then I see her face.

  . . .

  They burned you in Uppsala, [3]near the row of kings. I want to have been there. Everyone tells me again and again, “Hold your pride, Geira. They honored him and continue to do so with their gifts.” Because with the box of ashes are gold arm rings and fine iron weapons, statuary, dress-pins carved in their outlandish northern fashions, and piles of sealskin. I say, “It’s a wonder they didn’t send a pair of walrus tusks.” Your mother grips my arm, bruising it, and I am quiet after that.

  We inter you in the barrow field, near your father and grandfather, your aunt and old cousin, and all the strong warriors of your line. I do not cry, and I know you will forgive me even if your mother does not.

  . . .

  [4]At night I cannot sleep. The press of your brothers and their wives, of all the children rolling on their mats near the long fire, itches at my eyelids until I open them and stare at the timbers holding the roof up. I stare as the dim glow of embers catches the whorls of woodgrain, and I remember your fingers tracing the lines of my palm.

  The emptiness when you were only traveling was finite. It would end when the days began to grow short and your ship would sail you home, your arms filled with treasures and stories. I spent those sleepless nights dreaming of what the stories would be, what tales of blood-price and love, of betrayal and honor and courage, you would whisper to me beneath the blankets.

  These sleepless nights promise no end.
The ship you steer now floats on an ocean with no shore. And I have neither shore nor ship. [5]I am drowning.

  . . .

  I throw aside my blankets and go out into the night. It is the end of summer, so already the sun teases at the horizon, never too far from us. Even without my overdress I’m not cold, but I wrap my arms about myself and walk through the town and around the edges of the iron bog to where the land rises toward the silvering sky.

  At the top of the bluff the barrow field spreads out before me. The granite boulders mark out a silent fleet of death-ships, arcing over the grey-gold grasses. I push through to yours, touching my fingers to the cool stones. Most are splotched with lichens, giving green and yellow eyes to the rocks. I trace the shape of your stone ship with my feet, walking the ring of stones and imagining you standing at the prow, which faces the ocean as they all do. I imagine you as you were the night you left, cheeks flared with excitement, wrapped in the blue mantle your mother and I made. The rings on your arms and fingers glittered while the sun set, and you were the most glorious you’d ever been. I took you home and slid them off of you, stripped you down and washed you with lavender water. I braided your hair and you pulled me onto your lap. You promised to come home with wealth enough to build our own house, a house for eight children, each stronger than the last. I laughed and reminded you we’d be lucky to get two out of me.

  You put one of your rings on my thumb, and while I stand in the barrow field, I twist it around and around.

  . . .

  Every night I go to the fields and sit in the center of your ship. I listen to the ocean whisper, to the scrambling feet of rodents and foxes, to the wind ruffling nighthawk feathers. To the far-off wolves. I begin to carry your hammer with me, the one that did not protect you in the mountains of Uppsala. Some nights I see the Raven Keepers tending the graves, silent as wights.