Virginia followed her father around the room by the wall without taking her eyes off the mound of dirt.
Sutton set the lantern on the floor, leaned against the wall, and eased himself down onto the bedroll. He crossed his legs and beckoned to Virginia, and she came to him, sat in his lap. She turned her head so that she could see her father’s face in the flickering lamplight. He smiled down at her, and she smiled back. But there was sadness in his glittering eyes, and Virginia’s forehead creased with worry.
“What’s wrong, Father?”
He stroked her hair and grimaced. Shook his head.
“Is it what I told you?” Virginia said.
“Yes,” Sutton said. “Tell me again what you did.”
“He was coughing, Father. And crying. Keeping everyone awake.”
“Was he?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Is that why. .”
“Well. .”
“Tell me, Virginia.”
The little girl frowned and turned away from him. She scratched her nose. “It’s dusty in here.”
“You get used to it.”
“I don’t want to get used to it. I want to go home and I want you to come home, too.”
“I don’t think we’re going to go home.”
“Don’t be silly, Father. We can’t stay here. It’s filthy.”
“Tell me again.”
“What’s that?” She pointed at the mound across from them. At the tiny cross that marked it.
“It’s there because of a mistake I made.”
“And what’s the hole next to it?”
“That was for me, but I was too much of a coward to lie in it.”
“It would have been fine for Oliver.”
Sutton breathed out heavily through his nose and rubbed his forehead. “It’s my fault. All of this is my fault.”
“Oh, no, Father. Don’t say that. It’s all Hester’s fault, really.”
“What about Oliver?”
“Well, of course it’s his fault, too, but he’s only a baby.”
“What did Hester do?”
“She took Mother away and she made Oliver. She made everything wrong. And then I saw her leave that night with the other man and I knew it was my chance to make things right again.”
“Make things right.” There was no emotion in his face.
“If only you’ll come home,” Virginia said, “then Hester will leave and we’ll be a happy family just as we were meant to be.”
“You can’t have done what you said. You’re lying. You saw something happen and you’ve made up a story about it.”
“I practiced first,” Virginia said. “I took Mr Baggs’s smallest pig, the runt that he was going to kill anyway, and I took it to the woods, and it followed me just exactly like Oliver did.”
“A pig.”
“Yes. And really, Father, the pig was so much harder than Oliver, because it tried to run away from me, and then I got blood all over my best dress. Oliver did just what I told him to, but he was coughing and coughing and so I had to do it to him faster and he got blood on me, too.”
“You murdered your brother.”
Virginia snorted. “He isn’t my brother at all.”
“And you put him in the well. Like rubbish, you tossed him aside.”
“No, Father. He was too heavy for me. Peter and Anna found us and they put him in the well and they said not to tell anyone.” She smiled at him and put her tiny hand on his arm, her knuckles dimpled into the chubby flesh. “But I can tell you because I did it for you.”
“No,” Sutton said. A single tear turned his pale cheek pink and lost itself in his beard.
“Now you don’t have to be with Hester anymore.”
“Stop talking, Virginia.”
“I know it was bad.”
“Stop now.”
“You’re not too terribly angry with me, are you, Father?”
Sutton closed his eyes and reached for his daughter. He pulled her to him, and she snuggled against the warmth of his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and stroked her hair and put his lips against the top of her head.
“Shhh,” he said. “Quiet now, my princess.”
59
Peter Price was shouting, and so she eventually opened her eyes to see what he wanted. The first thing she saw was a billow of brown and white, and she blinked hard, refocused her eyes, and saw that she was in the top of a tree. But she was lying on the floor of the inn, and gravity seemed to be all wrong. She blinked again and now the top of the tree was above her, and the world spun and righted itself around her. Or rather, her perception of the world righted itself.
The ceiling was only partially there. Above it, the top floor seemed to be gone and had been replaced by the very old tree that had always stood beside the inn. Branches of the tree, each of them as big as any normal tree she had seen, had invaded every nook and cranny of the inn’s many rooms. At least, all of the inn’s rooms that she could see from her position on the floor, and she could see a surprising number of them. Snowflakes and errant brown leaves fluttered down and about, and already there was a fresh skin of snow everywhere inside.
Of course, inside no longer seemed to be quite so inside as it usually was.
Peter Price was still shouting. Jessica sat up and checked herself for injuries. Aside from a multitude of scrapes and scratches, she seemed to be fine. The tree had apparently pushed her down and across the common room without doing her much damage.
Next, she looked around for Peter. He was pinned against the far fireplace by a tangle of strong and flexible branches. He was waving at her, his eyes wide and frantic.
“Are you okay?” he said.
“I seem to be fine,” Jessica said. “How about you?”
“My arm hurts.” She looked through the massive wooden nest and saw that Peter’s arm was twisted strangely. Possibly broken.
“Can you move?” she said.
“No,” he said. “And I think it’s on fire.”
It took her a moment to figure out what was on fire, but then she saw the tendrils of smoke weaving their way around the boy and realized that the tree had inserted part of itself into the fireplace.
“Wait there,” she said, then realized it was a ridiculous thing to say since Peter had already admitted he couldn’t move. But it did seem to calm him.
The roof had slowed the tree’s progress through the building, but it had been moving fast. Thin, strong wooden limbs had thrust their way through her dress, just missing her legs, and into the floor. She broke through them with her wrist. Quick jabs. She looked around for her missing left shoe and found it under a lot of brown. She grabbed it and stuck it on her foot. She took hold of a bigger branch above her and pulled herself up, groaning with the effort, then looked around for the next big branch between herself and the fireplace.
“Where’s Anna?” she said, shouting to be heard over the rushing wind.
“She’s upstairs. You sent her there.”
Jessica looked up. There was no upstairs.
She hiked up her skirts and straddled a branch that was as big around as her body, swung her other leg over, and hoped Peter wasn’t looking her way. There was no time for modesty. Her feet touched the floor and she gauged the distance to Peter again. Closer, but it was going to take a while to navigate through the sudden thicket, and she was worried about the smoke forming behind the boy. She considered kicking off her shoes. She could move faster that way, but the floor was covered with splinters, some of them huge, jagged, dangerous. Bare feet would quickly become a liability.
“Peter!”
“Yes?”
“Look around you. Look for a fireplace poker or a stout stick.”