Seven Dead Sisters by Jen Williams & Jen Williams

Author:Jen Williams & Jen Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PS Publishing
Published: 2022-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

JOAN WAS BORN a year or so after Mary, a narrow, pale-faced baby who was unnaturally quiet. Alizon had turned seven that year, and would go and peer into the crib—so recently vacated by Mary—and look down at this strange child, who would be looking back up at her, blue eyes narrowed. As the baby grew, Alizon became convinced that Joan was a changeling, a faery child left in place of the real sister she should have had. She was sure, as Joan became small and slight with a long face, that if she pushed Joan into the fire, she would turn back into the lump of silver birch the faeries had fashioned her from, or whoosh straight up the chimney and into the night, her long limbs dangling.

Meredith, Alizon, Anne, Mary and Joan—they were quite the gang at that time, a gaggle of geese, their father would call them, too noisy for his liking. They were two years away from Meredith vanishing in the woods, five years away from the bitter winter that saw the end of Anne, seven years from Mary’s foreshortening. For a while it almost seemed that they might be safe, because there were simply so many of them, so many small girls, hot hands clasped in each other’s fists, the baby Joan dandled on Meredith’s knee and Mary beginning to toddle, to find things she could break. At first Alizon did not think to ask the faeries for Joan’s protection—she was one of their own, after all—and there were good, warm summers, rain in the spring, and some mild winters. Their father still looked at them over his hard grin, but he was busy and often outside, drinking small beer with the neighbours and hunting. There were deer in the woods then, rabbits, pheasant. If you were quick.

Now, in the cold woods by the side of the killing road, Alizon slowly came to a stop. The names in her head faded, and she remembered where she was. She had left the road far behind her somewhere, and in her fear she had walked without thinking. Should she have followed the road back to the village? The idea of seeing a familiar place was attractive, but what would they do? Lock her up again of course, find another day to burn the last Grey girl. In the end, what had happened to John Bowman and Thomas Whittle didn’t change what she had done.

She could have walked onwards towards Dyersbrook; stolen what she needed to live and moved on to some unimaginable place beyond. Somehow the thought of walking all that way on the killing road, utterly alone, with the trees on either side watching her...somehow the thought of that would not sit still in her head. So.

“So I don’t know where I am, or where I should go,” she said aloud. It was getting lighter. The moon had gone, and the trees that loomed on all sides were painted with the silvery lilac light of dawn.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.