The Grace Year: Spring

The second I hear his footsteps on the bottom rung of the ladder, I slip back into bed and feign weakness.

His eyes meet mine. And what should be an innocuous gesture feels entirely electric.

“Birds are flying low. Better batten down the hatches, close off the flue. Spring is about to go out with a bang.”

“Does Anders have scars?” I ask, trying to control my breath.
“Yes,” he replies warily.

I’m not sure if it was tradition or the idea of magic that set me off, but it makes me realize how ingrained the county runs in me.

In the county, bathing with flowers is a sin, a perversion, punishable by whip.

“Is everything okay?” he asks. He’s so attuned to me now. He probably hears the change in my breath.

“So, you’re like the guards, then?”
“No.” He shifts his weight at the thought. “I’m all...intact.”

I think he’s trying to cool me down, but it only seems to fan something deeper inside of me. It’s a different kind of heat. One that I don’t know how to quell.

I understand why the girls in the encampment cling to their magic. It’s the same reason I cling to this. We’re all yearning for escape. A respite from the life that’s been chosen for us.

Anders’s face goes ashen. “You’re not thinking of deserting, are you? What about your family? Your pay? They’ll starve—”

“Are you sure this is it?” I tug back on it, forcing him to meet my eyes.
“Positive,” he says, clearly taken aback by my intensity.

"I’ve never touched the stuff, but the old crones use it in the northern woods for scrying work. If you even put a drop on your tongue, you’ll have visions. They say it connects you to the spirit world, above and below.”

When he presses his skin against mine, the bloom he chose for me opens up, filling the space with a heady perfume of longing and pain. Entirely ephemeral. Absolutely forbidden.

He’s a poacher. I’m prey. Nothing will ever change that. But in this small treetop cabin, away from our home, and the men who named us, we are still human beings, longing for connection, to feel something more than despair in this bleak year.

I wonder if they think I’m a ghost, an apparition come back to haunt them.

“Where is she?” Kiersten’s voice ratchets up my spine.

I look up at her, really look at her—the dull-yellow matted hair, sunken cheeks, sallow skin, her once-clear blue eyes completely swallowed up by her pupils—and I realize it’s not just Gertie...Kiersten doesn’t remember.

Searching the camp, I’m trying to come up with something that might appease them when I see Meghan standing by the gate, who might as well be a ghost with that complexion.

Searching the camp, I’m trying to come up with something that might appease them when I see Meghan standing by the gate, who might as well be a ghost with that complexion.

Looking around the campfire, it’s hard to imagine that in a few short months, we’ll be going home to become docile wives, compliant servers, laborers.

Looking around the campfire, it’s hard to imagine that in a few short months, we’ll be going home to become docile wives, compliant servers, laborers.

“I remember the smell of frankincense, the dark red velvet cushion pressing against the back of my knees. The ooze of beeswax dripping onto the pedestal.”

I snap awake to find myself hunched over Gertie’s cot, the slightest whiff of bay leaves and lime in the air. It reminds me of the apothecary...of home. I used to love that smell, but now it seems too harsh...astringent.

They said she was being haunted, that the ghosts would braid her hair at night, tie up her ribbon in strange configurations. Made her go crazy.

“Closer,” she says, holding up the bucket of water. The patch of bright green algae clinging to the rope brings that vile taste back—the feeling that your tongue is being coated in dank velvet.

Sinking down next to it, running my hand over the thin cut of cedar that’s been wedged inside, I feel a mood slip over me. I thought it would take at least a few days to fix, that they’d be replacing the entire log. Yes, it’s shoddy work, but I’m trying to figure out why I care so much.

Using the hatchet, I make a clean cut in the bark, lifting off a huge strip. If I roll up enough of these and link them together, maybe I can form a pipe. It’s a tedious task, peeling every birch I can find, but there’s something cathartic about it.

Using the hatchet, I make a clean cut in the bark, lifting off a huge strip. If I roll up enough of these and link them together, maybe I can form a pipe. It’s a tedious task, peeling every birch I can find, but there’s something cathartic about it.

A red chrysanthemum. The flower of rebirth. My skin explodes in goosebumps. How did this get here? I reach in to grab it, being careful not to touch her bones. It’s a little tattered and bruised, but the stem is cut on the bias, with precision and care.