Near the Bone by Christina Henry (ebook reader color screen txt) 📗

some other people did—and they had been careful to build the fairy houses in the grass because Mom didn’t let them go into the woods alone.

Mattie remembered flattening herself against the grass—the morning damp seeping through her favorite My Little Pony pajamas—and peering inside the fairy house.

“There’s something here! Heather, look!”

Her own hand reached carefully inside to pull out a tiny, perfect pinecone.

Of course, no fairies had come. Mattie knew that now. Her mother must have gone out to the yard in the night and put the pinecone inside so that her girls could hold on to their belief a little longer, so that their world would stay dusted with magic.

Griffin and C.P.—they were like Samantha and Heather when they were small, still believing in the possibility of something, hoping for it with all their hearts.

But they think they’re going to find some benign creature, something that will wave at them while they take photos and sketches. They don’t know there’s a real monster out there.

William had been walking around the cabin stuffing objects into his pack while Mattie drifted away in her mind. She was lucky he was so preoccupied with the creature in the woods, else she surely would have been punished for woolgathering.

She squeezed the water out of William’s trousers and pinned them to the line, trying very hard not to think about the roll of money that had been in the pocket. If she thought about it, she might look at the place where she’d hidden it, and if she looked then William might wonder what she was looking at.

Keep calm, keep safe. Hide in plain sight.

Mattie noticed William stuffing some of the grenades into the backpack.

“William,” she said, very carefully, very respectfully. “If you detonate those bombs, won’t people hear and come investigate?”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “The only place I’m going to use them is up in that cave.”

That got Mattie worrying about a cave-in, or a landslide. It didn’t seem like a good idea to set off a grenade in the side of a mountain.

What if Griffin and C.P. are up there and William blows them to pieces? Surely they have families that will come looking for them, and those families will find us.

(If they do then you can tell them that William killed their children and then the police will take William away and you’ll be free, free, free)

No, that was a terrible thought. Mattie didn’t want to build her freedom on the bodies of people who’d only tried to be kind to her. But she was concerned that the group would run into William while he was out hunting the creature, and that the strangers would come to harm.

If the creature hasn’t killed them already.

“I can tell you’re worrying, Mattie girl,” William said.

He stopped what he was doing and put his hand on her cheek, a gesture that nearly startled her into stepping away. William was never tender, or he hadn’t been in so long that she didn’t think he knew how to do it.

“I can see by the way your brow is furrowed,” he continued. “But I don’t want you to worry about me. I’m going to take care of that demon and keep us safe, and then I’ll come home to you just like I always do.”

Don’t come home, she thought, but she made sure that the words stayed behind her eyes, deep inside where he couldn’t see them.

“Of course,” she said, and pushed a smile out so that he would know she believed him.

“Things are going to be better for us after this,” William said. “I see that now. God sent this demon to try me, and when I defeat it, He’ll finally bless us with sons as a reward. All things are as He means them to be. And when we have sons, Mattie—when you’re finally a mother as you’re meant to be—I won’t have to punish you so often, because your heart will be content as all women’s hearts are when they fulfill their purpose.”

“Yes, William,” she said, and lowered her eyes modestly to the ground and hid the fierce and burning sickness that had suddenly bubbled up in her throat. She didn’t want his sons. The idea of being chained to him by another human being was repugnant. And she didn’t want to think about how he might raise such a son, how William might train the boy to be just the image of his father.

I must get away before he manages to get me pregnant again.

“You’re a good girl,” William said, and kissed her forehead. “I know that God will bless us soon.”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to go set a few other traps in places where we saw its tracks,” he said.

“Like snares?” Mattie asked, doubtful that a feeble piece of rope could capture such a monster.

“No, I’m going to dig a few pits,” William said. “It will probably take me most of the day. I’ll do one close to the cabin, back behind the outhouse, in case it decides to come back that way. The tracks led away in that direction after it left its unholy message in the snow. After that I’ll head up the way we went yesterday and dig out another one.”

Pits, Mattie thought. Pits were dangerous to people walking in the woods, people who didn’t know that there was a madman living on the mountain trying to catch a demon.

She didn’t have any way of warning them. There was nothing she could do.

“I brought some fresh bread and cheese yesterday,” William continued. “You could have it as a treat for your lunch today.”

Mattie half-wished there’d been a monster on the mountain always, for William had probably never been so nice to her as he was today.

“Thank you,” she murmured. “You’re always so good to me.”

“I’ll bring the food in from the storehouse and then I’ll head out,” he said, slinging his pack over his shoulder.

Mattie watched through the window as he went out to the storehouse. He unlocked the door with the