CHAPTER THIRTY
To balance the limited experience of his short life, his only threats being weather, flies, and the boredom of the pasture, there also exists inside the horse the memories of his ancestors. It doesn't matter that he's never heard this particular sound before. They had. It wakes him from his sleep. On instinct he scrambles up and runs in the dark, kicking wildly through the turf, ears back in terror, away from the howling which is soaring fast down the meadow towards him.
.
For the second time in my life I wake up outside.
The blurred branches sharpen above me before I recognize what they are. Then I understand that I'm cold because I am naked and wet. I sit up; startled birds fly off from above me, rattling the trees. Dew runs from the hollow of my neck down my chest. My throat hurts terribly, raw, as if from screaming.
A memory. I rub my mouth with my hands in panic. They come away clean, no flakes of blood, and my breath comes out in a rush. I stand up, shaking. A moss-covered pile of stones sits in the water beside me; this is the source of the babbling sound of voices in my dream, this is where Jepson had thought of damming the creek; I know where I am. I am still home. Just inside the furthest boundary of my land. Just where it edges on my neighbor's. If Whitlock were to come to the end of his field and look out over the dividing creek, I'm what he would see. I am what anyone could see, because I've spent the entire night exposed.
I'm terrified. I've done something bad and wrong. I am bad and wrong. Someone should've stopped me. I will be punished for escaping. All of this is true and none of it cancels the fact that I also feel intense gratitude. The desperation that has gnawed me since I arrived here has been, for once, soothed.
Looking down, there's no fur left anywhere, not even packed inside the cuts in my hands and feet. I'm changed back. Somehow I have none of the usual nauseous de-acceleration; there is only a lightheaded, satiated emptiness, embarrassingly similar to one which I have sometimes experienced privately at night. Inside me my wolf's heart still beats, but slowly, a second quieted beat fading away.
I wish this were not how it felt to escape. I wish this calm delicious peace were not the aftermath. I wish I was in pain and grief as I always am after leaving the cellar, because that would make my life's discipline worthwhile. But this feeling is the truth. This is how it was always supposed to be. The fur inside of me folds down gently, and the sensation is a soft, pleasurable stroking inside my skin, the feeling of an animal settling into sleep.
Behind me, beside the creek, an oval wad of dry grass and rushes lies bunched together, pressed down in the center. Just big enough to fit a man curled on his side. A man? I stare at it before realizing that what I am looking at is my own nest. As I'm hiding the evidence, breaking the nest back up into the brush, I see my hands more closely. My fingernails are cracked, worn down to the quick, and that is no surprise, but now that I'm focusing on them I notice a thin crescent of red-brown under each one. Not dirt. Blood. It did happen, after all. I need to go home.
.
The sun is high and hazy in the sky, I'm limping through the meadow, tall foxtail brushing inside my thighs, bruised, naked, squinting in the light. It doesn't matter if I am seen now, so much, compared to what consequence waits for me were I seen last night. In comparison to the questions- Where did I go? What have I done? Whose blood is this? -my nakedness is nothing. Especially the last: Who opened the door?
Seamus might- no, Seamus certainly would- if he knew about it, which he doesn't. Who does? Jepson, once. Now only Agnes. If anyone loves me in this world it's Agnes. The love she bears for me has all the fire of Row's loss burning at its center. And as this fact settles over me, I can see one reason why she might've done it, and the sunlight is suddenly harsh.
I walk faster. All around me, springtime glitters. I don't even register it. Up the hill ends the green-grey tangle of my forest and just over that, a jagged grey outline: Harthome. It's the utter mundanity of it that is so disorienting- the windows reflecting the sun, the wash on the side-yard line blowing in the breeze, the crows sitting atop the scarecrow. I'm nearly to the house. No one is in sight. And I'm lucky: draped over a rail of the fence beside the cottage is a feedsack, sun-bleached and stiff with age. Jepson never threw anything away. I thank him, silently, as I break it off the rail and wrap it around my waist. Even now that he's gone he's still saving me from myself.
I come in through the laundry door so that Rosalind won't see me, and there, standing in the dark of the stairway, is Agnes; she must've heard me kicking at the warped door to open it.
.
"Henry." Her gaping mouth is like a cavern and her fingers are spread wide at her sides, hen's-feet. When did she get so old? A little elf with her starched lace collar and red eyes. She's been crying. I bend down to hold her to my chest. She looks down at the feedsack, makes a helpless, appalled sound, and then clutches me as though I were still small. "I didn't do anything," I lie, whispering into her sparse curls. "I didn't hurt anyone." It's both a reassurance and a reprimand.
She heaves a dry sob into my chest. "Oh, my poor little boy," she whispers, and my heart turns over. "How could you, Henry?"
"I couldn't help it," I say, between gritted teeth. "The door opened." I don't want to accuse her, now, when we are both so fragile; I don't trust myself.
She holds me away at arm's length, eyes glittering up at mine.
"Were you caught?"
"No. I don't know. I don't think so."
Her breath comes out in another sob. She straightens herself. "We'll wait and see. God willing, nothing will happen." Her fingers tighten on my arms. "God willing. Where have you hidden it?"
"Hidden what?"
"The key," she says. "You haven't hidden it? But it's missing."
We look at each other. After a while she raises her chin. The Agnes I know is back, sword raised, pennants flying.
"Stay here. I'll bring down some clothes. Then, you will go outside and speak to him."