The Sister's Tale by Beth Powning (e reader for manga .txt) 📕

The whistle sounded. The train was crossing a road.

Drowsiness unmoored her thoughts, thickened her eyelids. The iron wheels clacked over the ties, the car rocked.

—

As she carried her carpet bag from the train station to the hotel, Flora felt she hadn’t left Pleasant Valley, only stepped into the train while the town’s elements were rearranged—picket fences, shop doors open to cool interiors, awnings casting shade across wooden sidewalks. Different, in Pictou, though, was the mewing of gulls and the sound of the docks—clangings, the shouts of stevedores.

She let herself into her room but did not unpack, only sat on the edge of a chair, one hand clutching her bag. The window offered a view to the harbour; on the far side of the water, like a dash of paint, were light-burnished hayfields. She glimpsed her reflection in an ornate mirror. Her hair, slipped from the brown velvet hat, her eyes, startled, half-frightened, oddly surrounded by things not her own: a tall dresser with lace runner, a red Turkish rug. She saw, in the reflection, the net curtains billowing up, settling down, in air that touched her face, smelling of wood shingles and the sea.

She imagined mown hayfields on the farm where Enid lived. A tiger cat, perhaps. A puppy. You can bring them. She saw Enid’s face, puzzled, gazing at her as if she were a stranger come to take her away from a place she might not wish to leave.

FIFTEEN Enid

THE FAINT ROAR OF the sea came from beyond a small woodlot on the far side of the road. There was no breeze. She squatted, prising a handful of weeds from around onions planted in the back garden; blackflies settled on her temples and the back of her neck. She ducked her face into her arm, raked the itchy bites with her fingernails. She could see the dog, panting on the dirt in front of the unpainted house where chickens had made hollows. Aprons and tea towels hung from the clothesline. Heat shimmered from the rust of buckets half-lost in grass, from the nails of pigpens built with scrap lumber.

She heard hoof beats and the rattle of wheels; a wagon emerged from the trees and came down the hill, a small bald man driving with a woman on the seat beside him. He stopped in front of the house. The sound of his voice was strange in this place, where she heard only the voices of Mr. and Mrs. Mallory.

“Whoa.”

She dropped the weeds, slipped through the grass and worked herself into an alder bush that had grown against the kitchen window. From there, she could peep around the corner and see the yard and the front of the house.

The woman climbed down from the wagon. Her dress was clean and without patches. White, with tiny pink flowers.

A girl, really. Maybe only a few years older than me.

The dog scrambled to its feet and began to bark. Mr. Mallory appeared at the front door.

“Shut that.”

The girl walked towards the house. She wore a straw hat with a blue ribbon around the brim. Curls on her forehead. Hair caught up in a soft roll, wisping over her collar. She put down a hand but did not look the dog in the eye. Careful. She continued straight to Mr. Mallory, not knowing that she should be afraid.

Mr. Mallory braced himself in the door, arm over his head, elbow against the frame, hand dangling loose. A shovel leaned against the house.

“What do youse want?”

“Are you Mr. Albert Mallory?”

She’s British.

“Yuh.”

“I am looking for Enid Salford. I heard from Reverend Charles Snelcroft that he sent Enid to you. You applied for a child from Miss Maria Rye.”

“We got no Enid Salford.”

“Why did he give me your name, then?”

“You telling me I’m a liar?”

The girl looked straight into Mr. Mallory’s eyes, as neither the dog nor Doreen ever did.

Nor had Fred.

“Excuse me. I am trying to understand. Perhaps someone made a mistake.”

“Must have.”

“But how could Reverend…how did he come by your name?”

A spider crouched beneath the window’s rotting frame, only inches from her face. Enid Salford. She had almost forgotten her own last name. She was the girl. She had been called nothing else since she had stepped off the train and been snatched by the collar; looked up, struggling, at a tall, misshapen man. Beard. Angry eyes. I asked for a boy. Arriving at the house, he had flung her to Doreen like a scrap of meat. Got you a girl.

Mr. Mallory widened his stance, filling the door.

“You got any more business with me? You and Perley Hayes?”

The driver stiffened at the mention of his name.

“Hey, now, Perley.”

Perley Hayes lifted his whip, minutely. He hunched forward, studying the ground behind his horse.

The girl returned to the wagon. She climbed up. The man circled the wagon, flicked his whip; the horse broke into a trot. The wagon disappeared into the trees.

Enid clutched the stem of the alder bush. Longing for the horse to stop. Longing for the girl to change her mind.

—

Who was it came in that wagon.

He muttered it at the supper table.

She wanted to hear him say that someone had come looking for her. Someone who knew her name.

Doreen placed a plate of flapjacks on the table. Flies landed on them. The flies had tiny feet, like socks. The flies had been in the pigpen. Enid wanted to nudge Fred’s foot under the table, bidding him look at how the flies kneaded the flapjacks with their specks of feet. But Fred was gone.

No one spoke until the plate was empty.

Mr. Mallory went out to the road with a rock in his hand. He hurled it up the road, in the direction the wagon had gone.

—

The day after, he stood in the barn door watching Enid milk the cows. As she lugged the buckets to the house he followed close behind, empty-handed. After breakfast, he ordered her to kill three hens,