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

Clothes turned up…bruises on the insides of her thighs…scratches from a man’s fingernails…marks of teeth…the whole forehead was broken in…blood…blood…

She turned and pressed her face into Mr. Fairweather’s wool overcoat. He put his arms around her and pulled her close.

TWENTY-ONE Like Beautiful Objects, Like Possessions

THEY TRAVELLED FAR INTO the countryside. As the sky changed from pink to dusky blue, darkness rose like water in the alder hollows, and orange maples turned black against the sky. The horse’s hooves crunched the dirt in rapid concussion, the rhythm of fear. Soon Enid could see only the lantern swinging at the side of the buggy, an erratic sear illuminating goldenrod, dry ferns, and the flash of ironclad wheel. Squares of occasional windows flickered in the night—candlelight, a yearning. The moon rose, as on the night she had run away from Mr. Mallory. She slid forward as the road descended, entered a stretch of woods. An owl swooped, an intent darkness, undeterred by their passage. The road emerged into silvered fields—in their centre, like black pearls, a house and a barn.

She stumbled down from the carriage. He slung a carpet bag over his shoulder, took the lamp from the buggy and walked behind her, shoving her across a tangle of collapsed grass until a house loomed in the circle of light. He kicked open the back door. A hallway. A room with a wood stove, a bed, a table. She smelled something sharp and lively. A scrabble on the low ceiling.

“Racoons,” he muttered. He set the lamp on the wood stove. He pushed her onto the bed. He set down the bag, then picked it up and stood with it in his arms. Finally he set it down on the floor beside the bed. He untied her hands, released her from the saliva-soaked rag. She clutched herself, shivering, trying to read his expression, but he was black angles, he was the scrape of chair legs, he was a chair held in one hand, swung close. He was swift sitting and kneecaps and the tap of a fingertip on her own thigh.

Broken window. The house held the silence of long emptiness.

“You don’t know me, do you?”

She knew Mr. Mallory. You had to do what he wanted. You had to guess not only what he would want you to say, but with what quality of submission to say it. With what absence of judgment. Enid had watched Doreen and learned how to breathe, where to look, how to hold her shoulders, what to do with her hands. How to make herself into what he wanted. How to be like the air that he would take in, satisfactory and barely noticed.

“I got to decide if I am going to take you with me or leave you here.”

He could leave her tied to the bed—feet tied, arms tied, gagged. The raccoons would creep down and attack her with their sharp-clawed, fingery paws.

“I got to know if you will be a help or a hindrance.”

Absolute silence. No horse and carriage passed on the road.

“I will be a help.”

“Will you, now? Because there was other women who said that to me. I will be a help. If they weren’t, I did away with them.”

To tremble. To still her trembling. To show fear. To be brave. Enid did not know. Moonlight on a piece of wallpaper. A flower. She fought against the image of Fred, turning on his rope.

“I took you because I want to have you.”

“Yes. You can have me.”

“Well, then. That’s nice. You do what I say, you be my girl, you don’t go running off to your sister, you come away with me, no one follows, we change our names. Understand?”

Why? She had done him no good. She had not sold a house. He had been angry with her. She did not understand.

“Yes.”

They would have noticed her absence. They would be looking for her. Words were papery, fragile, like toy boats set onto a river. She could not say she was glad to go with him. She could not promise to obey him.

He was hunched like a raccoon, eyes in a mask, glints. He raised a finger and drew it across her throat. His finger traced her nose, the circle of her face, followed her hairline, came down over her cheek and her ear.

“Any man had you?”

“No.”

“I’ll be your first.”

Could a heart hammer itself to death?

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll be my woman. You understand?”

She thought, now, that he wanted her not to understand.

“Mr. Tuck, I don’t understand, but it’s all right, I’ll be your…your girl, anyway.”

“And why is that? Why would you do that?”

Was he asking Why would you want me? or Why would you hate me? Did he want her to tell the truth? That she would do it only because she had no choice? She did not dare say it.

The tears came. She could not stop them. She kept herself from sobbing. Tears, mucus, the salty slime at the corners of her mouth. He slapped her face.

“Why would you do that?”

She had forgotten the question.

He pushed her down on the bed and unbuckled his belt. She panted, staring upwards, knees clenched. He would roll her over onto her stomach. She had seen Mr. Mallory climbing on top of Freddy, in the stall.

“I stole,” she said, suddenly. She could show him how she could be a thief. She could make him believe in her usefulness.

I did away with them.

He tossed his belt onto the floor. “Stole what?”

“I found a…a brass duck in your workshop. I figured it to have been a toy. Of…” she could not sully their names. “Of one of the children. I never had a toy so I took it.”

“When? When did you take it?”

“Today. I went to find my ribbon. I found the duck behind a basket…and I kept it.”

“Give it to me.”

“I…I don’t have it. I hid it in my bedroom.”

“Did you hide it well? So no one would see it?”

The beak.

“Yes,”