style="font-size:15px;"> But then she exhaled slowly and pushed forward. That wasn’t her mother’s scream. It was just Isabelle’s.
Over the past two years, she had heard Isabelle cry a lot from her room down the hall. She’d heard Isabelle pray and beg in the middle of the night. But the screaming was new. Was that why Tabitha’s mother slept with earplugs? Had she known there would eventually be screaming?
Tabitha pushed open the barn door. The horses looked nervous, shuffling in their stalls and tossing their manes. Her father stood in the center aisle, clutching a thick-bottomed glass. In the light flickering from a candle stuck to the top of the nearest stall with melted wax, she could see that the glass was empty, but for a single melting ice cube.
The front stall was supposed to be empty too.
“Tabitha?” Her father’s gaze struggled to focus as he stared at her, and she knew that was not his first glass of the night.
At the mention of her daughter’s name, Tabitha’s mother popped up from the nearest stall like Jack from his box. Her clear gaze was focused and hard. “Go back to bed. We’ll talk in the morning.”
“Let her stay,” Tabitha’s father said. “Nine is old enough to know how the world works.”
Neither of them mentioned the knife their daughter held.
Tabitha’s mother frowned, then sank onto her knees in the stall again. Her father waved her forward, and when she hesitated two feet away, he slapped one rough hand onto her shoulder and pulled her closer, positioning her in front of the open stall.
Tabitha flinched, but she forgot all about the unwanted hand when her gaze landed on the floor of the stall. There, propped up on both elbows in the strewn hay, lay Isabelle. Her face was crimson and streaked with tears. Her hair was sweaty and matted, odd strands of it clinging to her damp cheeks.
“Tabitha,” Isabelle panted. “Help me.”
But there was nothing Tabitha could do but watch.
Most of Isabelle’s hair was dark, from the dye Tabitha’s mother made her use, but the roots were a soft green. The very shade of the moss that grew along the edges of the stream running through the back acre of her father’s farm. The acre that used to belong to Isabelle’s family.
Isabelle had been fourteen when the soldiers had come for her parents after the reaping, when all the cryptids were being rounded up. Everyone knew it was coming. Isabelle’s parents had begged Tabitha’s mother to hide their daughter. To save her. But it was Tabitha’s father who’d agreed. He was the one who’d thought of the dye—the same shade his wife used to cover her gray. The same shade of Tabitha’s hair.
Tabitha and Isabelle could be like sisters, he’d said. And because he’d always been fond of his neighbors’ daughter, he’d agreed not only to hide Isabelle, but to buy his neighbors’ land after the state foreclosed on it and save it for her. For when she grew up.
Isabelle grew up real pretty. Tabitha’s father always said that. But she’d had to quit school when she got fat. Tabitha’s mother said people wouldn’t understand. They’d figure out she wasn’t human and they’d come for her too. So Tabitha kept the secret about pretty Isabelle, who cleaned the house and cried at night.
Nine years old was old enough to keep a secret, her father’d said.
But now, on the floor in the barn, Isabelle didn’t look so pretty. And suddenly Tabitha understood.
“Is she having a baby?” That’s what their mare had done when she’d lain down in the barn.
“It might be a baby.” Tabitha’s mother peered down at Isabelle, blocking Tabitha’s view. “But it might be a monster. We’ll know in a few minutes. It’s time to push.”
Tabitha’s father’s grip tightened on her shoulder. His other hand clutched his empty glass.
Tabitha watched, fascinated, as Isabelle gave birth, too tired now to scream. When it was over, the baby gave a hearty cry, and Tabitha’s father sucked in a breath. Tabitha’s mother pulled a rag from the pocket of her apron and wiped the infant’s face. She stood and turned, holding the child closer to the candlelight to examine it.
“Please...” Isabelle begged from the ground. “Let me see him.”
“Her,” Tabitha’s mother corrected. She folded the rag, then scrubbed it gently over the infant’s head. Then she looked up at her husband, disappointment clenching her square jaw.
The baby’s hair was a soft, pale green.
Tabitha’s father threw his glass at the side of the barn. It shattered, raining shards all over the hay. She flinched. Her father stomped out of the barn, headed for the house.
Tabitha’s mother spread the rag on the ground at Isabelle’s feet, then laid the baby on top of it. She turned to her daughter as Isabelle cried.
“Give me your knife.”
“While families all over the country are in mourning, a couple of local grandparents are counting their blessings. Two weeks ago, twelve-year-old Willem Henry Vandekamp survived what’s become known as The Reaping because he was at a birthday party sleepover. He is Otto and Judith Vandekamp’s only surviving grandchild.”
—from a September 4, 1986, broadcast of the Channel 10 Nightly News, Poplar Bluff, Missouri
The oracle wandered down the midway, her gaze flitting from one brightly striped tent to the next, her fingers reaching for each soft scrap of silk and scratchy patch of sequins she passed.
She had not forgotten the cages and chains and blood. No matter how fractured her mind might be, she could never erase the pain and terror of that night in the rain or overcome a lifetime spent in a four-by-six animal pen.
But those were distant horrors now, relegated to the realm of nightmares.
The daylight was for dreaming.
As she meandered in the afternoon sun, her eyes were bright and focused. Her thoughts—typically tangled like a knotted cord—were blissfully calm, because there were no customers yet, and her fellow carnies knew better than to touch or speak to her. Those she considered friends smiled or waved when she passed, and those she cared little for paid her little attention.
Rommily listened to the shifters count out beats under the big top as they rehearsed an addition to their hoop-jumping, ball-balancing act. She heard the soft shuffle of hooves from behind a heavy canvas flap as the centaurs played their afternoon game of poker with Abraxas, the young human roustabout who’d taught them when to hit and when to stand.
As she passed the next tent, Rommily heard a familiar snort, and the sound triggered a warmth that spread beneath the surface of her skin. She veered from the midway with no conscious intent. Her feet followed instructions from her heart without consulting her brain, and a minute later, she stood
