Thorne Chapter 7
A southern gothic fairytale
The unkempt grounds were unfortunately worsened by the debris of the hurricane, leaving many branches strewn hither and yon. Thankfully, though, the ground seemed immune to the floodwaters which crept up around the edges of the property. At worst, there were only certain large puddles around the estate that sometimes proved a nuisance when encountering a sudden depression in the ground that would be hard to spot even on a dry day. In light of this and in consideration of Ada’s sprained ankle, Abel ensured she kept careful pace with him.
As they moved beneath the light canopy of trees spread widely through the grounds, Ada noticed more of the buildings formerly concealed behind the vast sea of brush. She tried to keep her posture as calm and upright as possible, but occasionally wobbled on the numbed nerves of her ankle that crept up her calf. Despite her infirmity, she kept well attentive to Abel and the few words he traded on their walk.
“My father died when I was three years of age, and my mother followed him four years later,” he explained. “I recall him very little, but I recall my mother and I alone here after. I do not recall ever seeing her leave, but I suppose she must have on occasion to feed me.”
“She did not go to the others in the settlement? You were really unaware of them?” queried Ada with some incredulity.
“I never left the property. I always remained with a servant or two. If there were a settlement or neighbors, they never called on us. I had thought Washington might be the town, but it has not been around so long, to my reckoning. Moreover, you are the first to know that I even lived hereabouts.”
“What of the servants, slaves, anyone who tended the grounds?”
“When my mother died, they drifted off one by one. There was a question of my inheritance, as I was the only man of the house and had not yet come of age. Some nights they would serve me dinner or tuck me in, saying, Good night, young master, and then, the following morning they would vanish.”
“They just left you? How heartless!”
“I was told most of the staff were being sent ahead of me either to prepare me a place elsewhere or to seek new employment. I was told that an uncle of mine would come to take me away somewhere until I came of age, and another would take charge of the estate in my place.” His voice drifted off as if mesmerized. “Then, one morning, I awoke and was alone. I supposed my uncle would come for me later that day, but he never did. I supposed he had been held up, so I waited. I was so sure that…” He gaped a moment, like his tongue had suddenly glued to his jaw, and then he pressed his lips together.
They were passing a sprawling patch of tall grass and weeds that had perhaps once been a field of some sort. They turned from there and moved along a path between a rickety shed and two overgrown cabins, one long, one short. Spanish moss hung like dusky veils from their eaves. Here and there lay a plow overturned and webbed with roots and long vines slowly subsuming the aged metal back within the bosom of the earth. Ada began to even notice patches of an old brick path along the trail, half-swallowed by grass and clay. Some cabins had collapsed, leaving only the chimney bases standing like monuments leaning in the clay. Stains along the buildings and trees, and silt deposits hither and yon throughout the grounds marked the passage of many floods.
Ada felt an eerie silence over all that seemed to creep into her very bones. She felt no pain, but her leg quivered like a bowstring with each step. The patches of moss on the ground muffled their tread. She smelled the earthy, sweet, and sour stench of mold and decay amongst sprouting magnolia and honeysuckle.
“I am…afraid I have no gardens or orchards through which to stroll,” spoke Abel apologetically, clearing his throat. “No golden fields to crown my home with regal splendor. I hope I do not bore you.”
“Oh, no!” insisted Ada. “It’s quite pleasant out now. It always is after a heavy rain.” She looked around and at the ground, pitted here and there with deep puddles of brackish brown water. Her ears were ringing with the buzz of cicadas all around. She glanced around and saw a couple of the roofs caved in and silently thanked God she had not run into one of them for shelter.
“Pleasant?” queried Abel as if the word were alien to him.
“I think it has…character to it,” tried Ada. “A…rustic charm.”
Abel snickered. “Yes. That’s certainly one way to put it.” He glanced over at a crumbling stone chimney base sprouting from a pile of weeds. “Watch your feet. There could be nails or some such debris scattered about.”
Ada shifted closer to him, almost shoulder to shoulder. Her eyes scanned the ground, but constantly caught some root or vine that led her curious gaze to trace its path to some leaning oak with iron hooks or rings embedded into its scarred trunk, or up the sides of crumbling masonry. Splinters of wood pointed up like teeth from some of the exposed brick foundations. Here and there lay fragments of broken crockery and rusted hinges, strewn and sinking gradually into the mud. Open sheds with warped beams gaped at them with crooked doorways. The fragments of civilization seemed twisted and open, like a voiceless scream of pain. Over all hung that same musty, sickly saccharine scent. “If I may ask,” she put quietly, “what exactly did your family raise here?” Abel raised a hand and pointed ahead with a long finger, and Ada followed his gesture to a pair of brick structures connected by a tin-roofed walkway. She plodded over to one of the leaning doorways and saw, within, a row of rusted, bowl-shaped kettles. One was filled with brackish water tinted red with rust.
“My father raised, um…sugarcane. If there indeed were a mysterious town hereabouts, then I’m sure he operated with them,” he murmured. The way he looked around at the ruins of his family home, one would think it had already vanished into the clay.
They wandered until they could see the house ahead, some two hundred feet and stopped before a rusty bell dangling from a wooden frame swollen with moisture. “I’m afraid there’s, ahem, not much else to show,” put Abel apologetically. “There’s the old, um, slave quarters, curing house, uh, stable, but it’s all more-or-less the same.” He shrugged. “I would walk you to the barn, but that might be a bit too out of the way. How’s your ankle?”
Ada rocked side-to-side and winced. “Still a bit sensitive, but I can walk well enough.” She braced her cheek against a palm and groaned. “Oh, I must find my way back home soon. My mother and father are certain to be frantic about me, and…poor Cora…and Peter. I must find out if they have made it safely.”
Abel’s face was expressionless. Even his eyes seemed dulled and indecipherable. “Do you know your way home?”
“Not at all!” sighed Ada. “What’s more, I don’t know how to circumvent the floodwaters. Or perhaps if there is a path not so deep.”
Abel scratched his chin. “Perhaps. The water is certainly lower now. If we cross the fields, I know a way roundabout to Washington that shouldn’t be too deep.”
“Right!” Ada declared decisively. “Then allow me to get dressed again, and we can be off.”
“Oh. Is the dress uncomfortable?” Abel seemed surprised and a little embarrassed.
“Not at all,” Ada laughed, “but my family might think it strange if I returned home after taking shelter from the storm in a new dress.”
“R-Right! Of course!” Abel turned around to the house as if to make sure it was still there and then turned to Ada and gestured ahead with a hand. “Shall we?”
Together, they returned to the back porch and entered the parlor. There, Ada excused herself back upstairs. When she reached the landing, she had a sudden thought. Walking back to the door of the roost, she decided to give it a quick inspection. She might as well, after all.
Opening the door, she saw the short stairway that led to a closet-shaped room. Hobbling up top, she gasped with delight. The room was small, only enough for one person, and she nearly had to hunch to enter. The only contents were a chair, a candle, and a small stack of books, which she, of course, perused. They were weathered copies of The Count of Monte Cristo, Leatherstocking Tales, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. She smiled to herself, wondering if Abel had been sitting there reading when she staggered up through the rain. At any rate, she knew what he had been doing when she ran into him later that night.
When she had at last returned to her room and changed back into her original clothes, she tried to ignore the itching from the dirt caught in them. Then, she returned downstairs to find Abel awaiting her in the foyer.
Abel had also apparently taken time to change (though she hadn’t heard him go up or down from his room). He was dressed in leather ankle boots, a red cotton vest, a short wool jacket weather-darkened to a dusky earth tone, a red bandana, and a broad-brimmed, sun-bleached felt hat. The clothes were well mended but clearly aged, giving him the appearance of Stingy Jack. He only lacked the lantern. At his side, he carried a rusty hatchet.
As they stepped onto the front porch, Ada had the impulse to look at the door, recalling the strange design she had felt on the doorknob. When Abel closed the door and turned away, Ada noticed the brass knob dulled to a sepia gleam and realized the design she had felt the night before when she grasped it was an engraved motif of a rose, and the faceplate beneath it was embossed, as she had thought, with winding patterns of thorny vines. Together, they decamped from the stoop and down the long path from the porch.
Taking a roundabout path from the old slave quarters and overseer’s house, they trod on some land that was a bit higher so that the water only came to their ankles. Before long, they found themselves approaching the border of the tall, grassy patch that was once the plantation fields. “Watch for snakes hereabouts,” warned Abel. “Moccasin snakes are common in the fields.” Then he led her slowly through the vast grass field. Here and there, Ada could hear cicadas chirping, and she kept close to Abel while watching her feet.
“Abel,” she murmured.
“Yes?”
“You’re sure no one lives near here…right?”
“What?” He half laughed as he glanced back at her.
“I mean…” She bit her lip for a moment. “No one, perhaps, lives near the thicket?”
“I never knew anyone to cross the thicket until I met you,” he replied. “I’ve been in and out of it for some time now to scavenge or hunt. The only time I saw anyone near it was when that boy wandered off.”
“You’re sure?”
“I oughta know.” He stopped to look back at her. “Why?”
Ada stared at him uncertainly. “You…You didn’t see me yesterday? In the woods? Late afternoon before I fled to your house?”
“Why…no.” A hint of concern edged his tone, and he turned to look at her. “I saw you approach through the rain from the window of the roost. I heard the door slam when you came in. I had no idea you were with anyone until you told me this morning.” He leaned in to try to catch her drooping gaze. “Why, Ada? Did something happen on your way here?”
Ada swallowed something back and covered it with a smile. “Oh, nothing. I’m sure I was just seeing things. You know, the storm, lightning, darkness…Anyway, it’s nothing.” She waved it away with a hand, then took his arm and urged him forward beside her. How could she tell him? About the awful moment before the storm? Of Willem’s limp body and the shadow of a figure digging at the clay like a madman? No. Better if Abel stayed out of it. She’d narrowly avoided danger that day. No use inciting his curiosity when it could get him killed. She tried changing the subject. “Oh, by the way, I’ve been curious all morning—what is in the locked room?”
“The locked room?”
“Beside the roost.”
He blinked inscrutably for a moment and then lifted his head, gazing nowhere in particular. “Oh…! Ah, yes, I see. The room beside the roost. Well, there’s a hole.”
“A hole?”
“In the floor, yes. A leak in the ceiling went unattended too long, and I, well…” He gave a nervous laugh. “I’m afraid my foot went through the floor. That was when I was a boy. Years went by, and the leak and…bad air made the floor worse, I’m afraid.” He scratched the back of his head. “I cannot trust the structural integrity, and the bed got so mildewed that I locked it up and abandoned it.”
“A hole in the floor.”
“Yes.”
“I see,” Ada shrugged. “Well, I can understand that. I just hope the rot doesn’t spread.”
“Yes, as do I,” agreed Abel quietly.
Ada glanced down at the hatchet dangling from his belt and silently wished he had a musket to go with it. She could hardly believe he had survived so long without one. Then she remembered what old man Bell had said about supposedly encountering Abel while hunting. It struck her that despite his meek personality and haggard appearance, there might be a more animalistic side to a boy who’d lived alone in the woods for so long. She was tempted to ask if he really caught prey with his bare hands, but decided against it.
Before long, they crossed through the field and entered the dismal tree line beyond. The forest was quiet but for the occasional caw of a crow in the treetops. Not long after, they were nearly up to their knees in brackish water, trying not to choke on clouds of mosquitoes. Abel eventually gave Ada his bandana to protect her neck against the pests.
Abel led the way, clearing brush with his hatchet. He had to watch his feet more than usual, and Ada had to catch him by his belt a couple of times when he tripped. Just because they couldn’t see the brush, after all, doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. Once in a while, Abel’s foot would sink where the ground gave way or had been altered by the flood.
Ada’s eyes scanned the area constantly, trying to recognize some path or catch the faint outline of cabins in the distance. Yet she had seen all at night or in a panic, and even had the conditions been favorable before, the hurricane had since altered the surroundings. Her eyes darted upwards at the retching caw of a raven fluttering from a branch. Her eyes widened at the glimpse of black buzzards circling somewhere above. She tried moving quicker, feeling the water and her skirt dragging at her legs.
“Watch your step,” warned Abel, sloshing forward, trying to keep pace. “You don’t want to injure an ankle again—woah!” He had to grab Ada’s forearm as he tripped forward and nearly dragged her into the water anyway. Ada had to lean back fully and plant her heels to keep upright. Abel fell to one knee and threw out a hand to brace himself in the water. He jerked it back instantly and swore, “Gah! Dammit!” He braced on Ada’s shoulder as he tried to regain his footing.
Ada let out a stifled laugh. “Oh, God, Abel! You didn’t twist an ankle too?”
“No,” he grunted, flicking his hand in front of him as if trying to shake the pain off with the water. “No, I felt a splinter or something. Look.” He held up his hand, showing the blood trickling from a cut along the edge of his palm.
“Oh!” Ada took his hand to examine and then locked her eyes ahead. “Oh,” she repeated, but quieter this time.
Even in proximity, it would’ve been difficult to notice. One would dismiss it as a broken stump sticking from the water. Yet a keen observer could recognize the broken teeth of boards risen from the water in front of them.
“What is that?” queried Ada in quiet thoughtfulness.
Abel leaned down and tried to wiggle a board with a hand but found it firm. “Thank God I didn’t fall prone,” he remarked with a shudder. “Look! Another over yonder.”
Ada took in the scene, following the trail of broken boards with her eyes. “It’s like a…wall of some sort. Or was…” She squinted as she traced the path of boards in a rough ‘U’ shape. Abel braced an arm around her shoulder, and she braced one around his side, and together they walked carefully forward. It was then Ada noticed that the area before them was a small, square clearing. “Look there,” came Abel’s voice, and she darted a glance to where he pointed. She saw the line of boards continued around in a perimeter of approximately sixty square feet. “Is that a…wall?” she remarked under her breath.
Abel looked around, snatched up a fallen branch, and stripped some of the smaller branches off with his pocketknife. Then he held the base before him and prodded the water as he moved tentatively forward. A quarter of the way in, he thrust the branch forward abruptly and leaned back, bracing himself before he could tumble in. He edged back carefully, reaching out a hand until he grasped a slender sapling behind him and hauled himself back to Ada’s side. “It’s rather washed out there, I think,” he remarked. “Probably this was mostly buried until the flood hit.”
“What is it?” asked Ada eagerly.
“An old shack or house of some sort, I think,” he replied, leading her further away from the sudden decline.
“Abel!” Ada gripped his arm with sudden inspiration. “The town! What if…?”
“I’m not sure,” he replied grimly. He narrowed his eyes at the rippling brown water. “It’s not unlikely there was a homestead or two nearby, but I’m not sure about a town.” He glanced back as if checking whether his home was in sight. “Still, it’s worth a look—once the floodwaters have receded, of course.”
Ada couldn’t drag her gaze from the dark pool. She stared as if she expected something to bubble up to the surface. It felt almost as if the town itself could be hidden down there—a wild, marshy Texas Atlantis. Though she had struggled to draw herself out, a perverse part of her urged her to dive back in. She shuddered and clutched Abel’s arm. “Lead on, please,” she murmured under her breath.
Abel took her hand and led her again through the brush. Together, they struggled and sloshed their way through the floodwaters. They continued some way in silence before Ada spoke.
“Abel…”
“Yes?” He gave a flitting glance back but seemed concentrated on the area before him.
“What will you do after this?”
“Do?” he seemed genuinely confused. “Same as you, I suppose; return home and change into something warm and dry.”
“Well…why not stay awhile?”
Abel stopped and turned to look at her, his expression characteristically inscrutable. By the look in his eyes, you would think he had forgotten she was there. “Stay…? Where?”
“In Washington, of course.” Ada stumbled around in front to face him. Her steps crossed awkwardly, and she swayed forward with a gasp. She felt Abel grab for her, and they gripped each other’s forearms, steepling awkwardly like a game of London Bridge.
“In…Washington?” Abel was finding it hard to keep his footing. Ada’s question had derailed his train of thought.
“Yes, in Washington. You saved my life, cared for me, gave me shelter. I’m sure my family and the people would…”
“No.” His answer was flat, dull, almost monotonous. He braced there for a few seconds and then took a tentative step forward, bringing Ada upright again. “No, I’m…I told you, I’m…I’m flattered, Miss Blackwood, but…”
“But what? You think people of similar…peculiarities have not coexisted with us? There are good Christian people who—”
“It’s not…” Abel stopped, pressing his lips together a moment. “As strange as it may seem, my deformity is the least of my concerns.”
“What others could there possibly be?” Ada had taken an incredulous tone, such as her mother took when she knew she was being unruly or unreasonable.
Abel locked shoulders with her, gripped a tree branch with his free hand, and hauled them both forward. They stood still for a moment beside the tree, trying to restore their footing. “I am naturally reclusive, Ada. I do not do well around people.”
“How would you know? You’ve been around no one but your mother and servants. And my father is a good man. He’d happily—”
“I do not doubt it, but…” Abel stood still, his eyes staring blankly ahead. He seemed almost mystified, tuning his ears to the eerie quiet of the woods. “Ada, do you…do you know yourself?”
“What?” She permitted a short scoff and stared at him in bewilderment. “What kind of question is that?”
“I mean…” His lips twisted, struggling to form the words. “I mean…do you know why you do what you do? I mean, always?”
“You’re saying you don’t know why you won’t go?”
“No, I mean…Yes, but…” He dug his long fingers into his scalp and bit his lip. Finally, his eyes screwed shut in concentration, and he rotated his hand before him as if conducting some invisible orchestra. “I mean that…you remember the harvest dance? When your friend was frightened?”
“Yes,” Ada blinked for a moment and stared. “She had nearly forgotten that night. Yet now she supposed…Well, of course, when Rebekkah Craven had screamed about a face. It had been so long, but—well, of course, it had obviously been Abel. Yet she was puzzled. “Yes. Becky had seen a face in the dark. That was you, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” His voice wavered a bit nervously, and he rubbed the back of his neck. “I…well, I had always listened to the celebration outside—near a window or something.” He waved a hand as if coaxing the words from his lips. “I, well, I’d been to look at one of your…harvest festivals before. Though only a couple of times. I would peek through windows or press my ear to the wall and listen…” His voice seemed far-off now, and something like a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “One year, I just…listened. The next year, I got a little bolder. I started peeking at the door. The next year, I would hide in the loft and watch from a pile of hay or crouching on a rafter. But, well…” He gave a humorless laugh and shrugged. “I got a little…greedy. Maybe part of me thought I could conceal myself in the crowd, mill about in anonymity and watch…” His voice trailed off, and then he murmured sadly. “But you’re not statues, are you?” He shook his head and closed his eyes, breathing through his nose. “When your friend saw me…I didn’t leave because I frightened her. I left because I was frightened.”
“Well, anyone would be frightened of a misunderstanding…”
“No, you don’t understand.” He bit his lip. “When they all looked around, in the dim light of that barn…they frightened me.”
“Why?” Ada was now thoroughly lost and cocked her head at him. “You thought they would panic or attack?”
“No-no-no.” Abel was shaking his head helplessly, his hand raised beside his ear as if it were ringing. “I love to watch them, Ada. I love to follow their movements, to hear their voices and their laughter. I love to see the colors of gowns fluttering about in the candlelight and listen to the song of fiddles playing the night away.” His eyes opened, and such a stare was in them, like he’d recalled some terrible nightmare. “But their eyes…” He shook his head. “I can’t explain it. When I look at them, I see something.”
“See what?” Ada murmured. She searched his eyes for some glimmer or motion.
He met her eyes with an almost childlike gaze. “You remember when you saw my statues last night? You recall their…their pantomime? That frozen movement in the dark?”
“Yes,” she offered a smile and gripped his sleeve. “But they’re very lovely in the daytime.”
He shook his head. “You recall that feeling, though? In the dark? Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Washington to me is beautiful,” he spoke wistfully. “Just as these woods, even this awful brush in all its chaos, are beautiful to me. All of this,” he cast his gaze around, “is pulsing with life. Even the storms are beautiful to me. The howling wind and hissing rain lull me to sleep many a night. It’s real.” His voice lowered, and a faint tremor lurked at the back of it. “Yet the people…when I see their eyes, when I see their smiles, it’s like a pitcher plant, bright and sweet…until the fly tries to land and slides inexorably down.” He rubbed his face absently. “There’s something under it all…frightens me. Like some danger I can smell but not see. Something…I don’t know. Something is living behind those eyes…and it frightens me. I can’t explain it.”
“Everyone has things they don’t say, Abel. Not every secret is a danger.”
“Oh?” he spoke with an earnestness that surprised her, and he looked deeply into her eyes. “Don’t you ever see a closed door or shuttered window and wonder what lives behind it? Don’t you ever wake up nights and wonder at alien sounds? Alien smells? Ada, there are things I won’t even say to myself—things I dare not think lest I perfuse them and grant them life. I watch the people, I listen to them…but in every flicker of candlelight, in every shoulder glance from a stoop, I see it flash there for a moment.”
“What do you mean, Abel? See what?”
“It’s all…” His lips struggled to form the words. “…unreal. Artifice. Like those statues in my home. Their emptiness is sterile, clean, and always what they are they show. Yet…when I look in a mirror, I see nothing, and I wonder if it is only unreal to me.”
“Well, you must get to know people,” she replied with an incredulous smile and a shake of her head. “It seems to me you suffer from not knowing others and not knowing yourself.”
“And knowing others would help me to know myself?”
“People create what they know,” she replied authoritatively, finger raised like a schoolteacher. “How can I write of the denizens of our mysterious inn or the goings-on of former generations if I do not observe, converse, and interact with the world around me? If you cannot do that, Abel, then the world will always be unreal to you, and your craft will always feel a pantomime.” She took his arm and gazed deeply into his eyes. “People are fascinating if you only give them a chance. Others find you frightening, but I’ve come to know you.”
“And you no longer find me frightening?”
“No,” she grinned and nudged him with an elbow. “Only odd.”
A lopsided grin tugged at the corner of Abel’s mouth. “You know, I still haven’t decided yet whether you’re odd or not.”
“Take it from me,” Ada smirked, “I’m infectiously peculiar.”
Abel motioned for her to step forward, and he draped her arm across his shoulder to help haul her forward like a crutch. “A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!”
Ada laughed, and they staggered on together. Before long, the trees thinned out apace, and soon, the dark line of the thicket loomed ahead. The silence around was stifling. No wind, no birds, even the flow of the river had been submerged beneath the black floodwaters that listed lazily by, almost imperceptibly. Ada stared at the blackened leaves and broken twigs drifting by on the glassy surface of the floodwaters.
Ada jolted and gasped at a chuckling cry and a rustling like sheets in the wind. She jerked her head up to see the black wings of a raven flutter overhead. Something made her glance down at the placid water, but she only saw the clouds of brighter soil kicking up with every step in the black flood. She glanced back up at the slender, stubby trees stretching up with naked branches to the sky. The grip of Abel’s fingers on her shoulder brought her back to reality. She traced the line of his raised arm to the long, white finger pointing forward.
There it was. In the distance stretched the tangled line of the thicket, not so dark as it had seemed the evening before. The wood was ashen, smooth, with a texture almost like stone. It didn’t even seem damp. Its length seemed to stretch interminably, like a vast equator dividing the forest. The sediment built up and sloshed in a thin line along its side like a beaver dam.
Abel led her to the gnarled wall of prickling, crooked branches and hefted his hatchet. “I can try my best to hack a way through for you. You could wait here or keep behind me. Only keep clear of my arm.”
“I’ll wait here,” Ada decided with a nod, and permitted herself to be led to the wall, which she leaned on and hooked an arm around one of the branches.
Abel made sure she was stable, then stood a few paces down from her, well out of reach, and with a grunt, waded in and began hacking away at the thicket. He grunted and staggered his way through the process, ripping branches away and tossing them behind him or stomping them aside. The hatchet made dull ringing noises before him. Before long, he was clearing a narrow path that seemed to sidewind through the leaning dogwood and tangled roots and yaupon. Then he stopped.
Ada waited a moment for him to speak, but nothing came. She couldn’t even hear the rustle of his movement in the branches. She leaned into the hewn entrance and called out, “Abel? What is it? A snake?”
“No…” He dragged the word contemplatively and let it hang for a moment. Then there was a rustle, and he hissed, “Listen.”
Ada perked an ear to the silence. Then she heard it—a faint barking. “A dog?”
“I’d rather not get maimed for my trouble,” grunted Abel. “Dogs have no less aversion to me than anyone else does.” He writhed his way back out and slipped the hatchet back into his belt. “This could be good news, though! Someone from Washington could be nearby. Now, it’s a tight fit, but considerably easier than when you last tried, I assure you.” He stood up straight and took on a more formal air. “I presume you can find your way from here? It’s not too far off, and…at any rate, you’re in familiar territory.”
“Then you’re really not coming?” Ada felt disappointed. “Why ever not? I told you, my family would—”
“I’m…sorry, Ada,” he cut her off with a hand. “Try to understand. To be looked at…” he offered a weak smile, “I can only handle so many at a time. In fact, I must implore that you tell no one I am here.”
“Abel,” she implored.
“I can’t. I just…can’t.” His eyes dropped, and he stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Anyway, the way from here won’t be so bad, and I’m sure your family has the town searching high and low for you.” He glanced around, squinting and pressing his lips together. “At any rate…this would be a hell of a story, wouldn’t it?”
“But you told me not to mention…”
“I mean, you could…I don’t know, extrapolate from this experience in the pursuit of future narrative exploits. Only make me tall, dark, and handsome, would you? It’d be a nice change from Black Jack.”
Ada tittered and beamed back at him. “Well, permit me a moment’s gracefulness after a most ungraceful performance last night.” She curtsied in her ragged dress. “Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Thorne.”
“The pleasure was mine, Miss Blackwood.” He gave back a short bow and grinned. He watched her turn and sidle partway into the thicket. Then he cleared his throat. “Ada…”
Ada stopped and glanced back at him.
“If you should lose your way again, hereabouts…perhaps you might now know your way.”
“Perhaps,” she replied.
“And perhaps…” He scratched a finger at the base of his throat. “Well…my door is always open.” He shrugged and rocked back on the balls of his feet. “Perhaps you’d like to show me your writing sometime.”
Ada’s brows raised, and her smile showed teeth. “Perhaps.” With that, she sidled her way through the brush, cinching her skirt tight with one hand to prevent it from catching on the branches. Difficult though it was, the lack of wind and rain and the presence of sunlight eased her journey back considerably, and Abel’s path cut most of the way through. When she staggered out through the other side, the air felt heavier. She almost expected the other side to be teeming with life after leaving the largely open and silent forest beyond the thicket. Apart from the denser foliage and clustered trees, it was all largely the same. She wondered how far away her point of entry had been. She saw no sign of the fallen tree that had marked her hasty entrance. Not that it would have made her navigation home easier.
She turned back to the thicket, not so eerie now, but mystical, and she called out, “Abel.” No reply came. She didn’t need one. “God bless you!” With that, she turned and trudged back through the brush straight back towards home. Without anyone to lean on, the progress was slower and clumsier. Twice she lost her balance and fell forward into the water. Yet her journey back was not so difficult and chaotic as it had been yesternight. She could hardly believe it had only been an evening. Indulging in an ironic chuckle, she staggered and leaned against a thin tree. She jolted again at the sound of rustling, but smiled at the flap of another bird fluttering overhead. She heard a booming noise through the trees and jerked her head around. Her ear rang with a sudden whizzing, and the corner of the tree burst in a spray of splinters. She collapsed backward with a gasp, arms flailing, the shot still screaming in her ear as the water surged over her.