The Probable Future

Stella took off her black jeans and her black T-shirt; they were so wet they leaked dye; Stella had to wring them out in the tub. She slipped on her black flannel bathrobe and flopped into bed. She was exhausted. All the same, she reached for her backpack; she didn’t bother to switch on the lamp or reach for the flashlight she kept in a night-table drawer. The greenish tinge of the last pitter-patter of fish rain was light enough to read by. She took Matt Avery’s thesis out, all of it there but the very last page that he’d been typing today, and opened it. The pages smelled like water, she noticed that right away, and something that reminded her of water lilies.

Invisible Ink, An Account of the Life and Death of Rebecca Sparrow.

The rain was coming down one lazy drop at a time, and Liza, still down in the kitchen, was listening to Sam Cooke, whose voice could take anyone’s troubles away. Darling you send me was the echo that filtered up the stairs. Honest you do.

Matt’s thesis began with the first lines of Charles Hathaway’s journal.

I was the man who was at fault, whose guilt was never known until these words were written. And even then, who will ever read these lines and know these words to be the truth?

It was cold in Stella’s room tonight, so she grabbed a blanket and tossed it over her shoulders. She had the bad habit of chewing on the ends of her hair when she was nervous, much the way her own mother bit her nails. Now, Stella had taken up her bad habit without thinking. She could no longer hear the rain or Sam Cooke or the cars on the street. She skipped over Matt’s introduction: the founding of the town by Hathaways and Hapgoods and Elliots, the encounters with native people, the bear that was killed in the middle of town beneath the old oak tree, the number of horses and cows and sheep that were owned, the shipments from England of spices and tea and mirrors and ink, and, on rare occasions, bolts of blue or crimson silk.

For so long Stella had wanted to know everything. Now she had a funny feeling in her stomach. Now the book was in her hands. She took a breath, the way a diver might, as though the pages and the print were deep water, deep as the lake beside her grandmother’s house, deep as all time.

IN THE YEAR OF 1682 the winter was so cold the ice froze solid in Boston Harbor, and it stayed that way until the middle of March. On the morning when the ice finally melted, a fierce blue day when the wind toppled some newly constructed birds’ nests from the trees, a child of seven or eight years old walked out of the woods, up on the hill that overlooked Hourglass Lake, near the rock formations the settlers dubbed the Table and Chairs. This was the place where some people said invisible roses grew, the sort that disappeared in the blink of an eye. No one was surprised that a person could just as easily appear, one who spoke a language no one understood.

She arrived on the day when the first snowdrops appeared, growing right through the melting ice, there to remind one and all of the gifts of the Angel of Sorrow. Who saw her first was a matter of debate, but it wasn’t long before the whole town knew that a child had wandered out of the wilderness, coming down from the north where there was far more ice than there were snowdrops. Before most people saw her, they already knew that the roses that withered when seen by the citizens of Unity were said to flower in her presence. It may have been Charles Hathaway who first reported that he had seen the child whistle and call the sparrows to her; these birds, people vowed, had brought her berries and sweet clover, and on this she had survived during her time in the woods. She spoke only gibberish, and she didn’t even know how to pray. Her black hair was tangled with brambles. In her possession she had three things, brought from whatever cold country from which she had appeared: A silver compass. A golden bell. A star on a chain. People looked at these things and whispered. They peered at the soles of her feet, turned green and tough as leather from walking so far, and they wondered who indeed she might be.

Which generous neighbor among them would take her in, a child of not more than eight? Unity was a town built in the sight of the Lord, but where was the charity that was so often preached when the minister traveled the winding roads from Boston? None of the families wanted her, not even the Lockharts, who raised pigs and sheep on the far edge of town. The child was pretty enough, with a bright countenance, but when she was brought to a meeting on the town common, called to pray for guidance and rejoice in the salvation of a human life, she didn’t even know to get on her knees. She looked right at the heavens, prideful, questioning, and that was worrisome indeed.

John Elliot was the first to take her in, not that he wanted to. It was his wife that suggested they study compassion, but on the very first night the child was with them, the family heard the bell ringing. They couldn’t sleep, not a wink, so they brought the girl back to town. The Hapgoods took her next, but she refused to take off the star she wore around her neck; she was neither pious nor obedient, so they took her back as well. It was then that Charles Hathaway had no choice but to take her. He was the richest man in town, granted his acreage by the king, and he saw it as his duty to succeed where other men failed.