More Bad Than Good
"Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief."-Anne Carson
Mary is a strange child, with the wildness of the forest about her and too much depth behind her eyes, too curious and much too outspoken for a Puritan girl.
She questions everything, stretches the limits of every rule, and he loves that about her more than he should, because it will lead to trouble everyone says, nothing good, and only heartache.
It's the strangeness in her that draws him like a moth to a flame, he realizes even at the time, and he doesn't love so much as worships Mary because someone like him could never be loved by her. But he's content this way, to simply watch her in silence, and it's no surprise when another quickly steps in where he could never be.
John Alden loves Mary the way she deserves to be loved, with the heedlessness and passion that burns in both their souls, and Isaac isn't jealous, because he's been John's friend since they were babes, and he loves them both as if they're part of him, three entwined strands formed into a single length of rope.
There's a wildness in John Alden, too, different from the magic in Mary, but just as strong, and it only makes sense that they would fall in love, because John and Mary were meant to be together, like the sun and sky, and everyone knows it.
Meant to be.
She sells her soul beneath a full moon, but she keeps her heart, and she thinks that would have been a fairer trade, to rip out her heart along with John Alden's child and lose them both together.
She feels herself harden and change, tastes the darkness like salt on the back on her tongue, filling up her throat until she can't breathe, can't scream. By then Isaac's brand has faded to a scar and if she still had a soul there would one on her forehead, too, and nothing can erase it from either of them, the visible and invisible, and everything lost and unspoken. This is how it is to be a witch, but then again there was always a bit of the witch about her, long before Mary Sibley traded her soul for the child in her womb.
George Sibley doesn't love Mary so much as hungers for her, like a bear eyeing meat, and it makes Isaac cold inside, cold to the bone, to see the way he looks at her. He's claimed and wed her before John - rest his soul - is cold in the ground, and when he sees Mary she's a little too pale and far too still and quiet, distant and unmoving, as if bone has turned to ice, and flesh to snow.
When John Alden comes back he's more ghost than man, half dead behind the eyes and as hard and brittle as stone, and there's nothing of the man he once was other than a distant memory and the faintest flicker in Mary Sibley's eyes when she looks at him.
But it's a spark, a glimmer of something long lost, and Isaac thinks that it's something, some flicker of hope that not all of what they were is utterly lost, that something remains.
Time erases that hope, of course. There's the trials, and the accusations, the whispers of witch followed by fingers pointing, and far too many people choking on water or jerking at the end of a rope. Darkness grips Salem like the devil himself was crouched over it, and that's how he knows that the witches are real, oh, not the poor souls who die, but the ones who don't, somewhere hidden, somewhere secret and unnoticed.
The pox comes next, and there's only dim awareness for a while, fever and torment, and Dollie, and her body limp in his arms, cold in death, and then him, Isaac, the last one anyone would have ever expected to do such a thing, standing up to the leaders of Salem, accusing them, head high and unafraid. Isaac, so changed from the frightened, lonely boy he used to be, and he thinks Mary, if she wasn't so lost herself, might be proud of him, because Mary was never afraid of anything so long ago.
It's a day or maybe more, when he looks up and sees John Alden, like a ghost, alive in Salem, changed even more than he'd thought possible.
He sees him coming from a distance, half stumbling, steps uneven, as if he's drunk or simply exhausted, worn to the bone. John Alden looks frail, as if every ounce of strength has been drained from his body, and that sends a chill through Isaac before he even makes out what he's carrying, before his mind grasps the dried blood on his shirt and sleeves, and even more encrusted into his lips and beard. Even then, it takes him a full minute to process the tangle of black cloth and fair skin, dark hair and blood, all jumbled together, like broken pieces he can't form a whole out of.
And then it hits him like a horse kicking him in the chest, driving him to his knees, stealing his breath until his ribs feel like they're shattering into his heart, because there's only one reason that John Alden would look like he does, only one reason he would be alive at all, and there's only one thing that horrible burden clutched against his chest could be. And most of all there's only one word for that hollow ache in his chest, that empty place where that spark of magic always lived, her magic, and her's alone.
Mary.