The Story Sisters

He saw the girl who had come out of the stables standing in the grass, her hair flying out behind her. There was pollen in the air; everything looked hazy and green.

“Who’s that?” he asked his brother.

“Her? She’s a little suburban bitch whose parents thought she was uncontrollable. I’ve got her doing all my schoolwork.” Michael always had to show off for his brother. “She does whatever I tell her.”

Lorry laughed. Unlike his little brother, he didn’t have to brag. He simply knew what he wanted. “Not anymore.”

Elv saw Michael and his visitor, but assumed they hadn’t spied her. She thought she was invisible. She was in Arnelle, far from the muddy green-edged spring. She was in a field where the violets were as big as cabbages, where the tomatoes were black and poisonous, love apples that dared you to take a bite. She went there whenever she left the stables. In New Hampshire, she was nothing, a speck in the grass, but her demon court had taken over the otherworld. They’d chased out the turncoat faeries who’d turned out to be cowards, willing to make bargains with human beings. They’d built houses of straw and mud, ringed with the black stones of vengeance, a curse to anyone who tried to harm them.

Elv assumed the handsome man approaching was on his way to the parking lot beyond the field. She’d never seen Michael’s brother before, but she’d heard about his exploits. He was like a magician, Michael had said. He could make things appear when you least expected it—money, drugs, a free apartment, a car with a full tank of gas. Elv suddenly realized he was headed straight for her. She felt light-headed, forced to step out of Arnelle. It was as if she was being torn out of something. She heard a crack, as though the atmosphere was breaking apart. She moved into this world. She could feel her heart beating hard.

“Nobody as beautiful as you should be here,” Lorry told her.

The first words he ever said to her went right through her. She was there in New Hampshire, standing in the grass in her terrible clothes, pushing the hair out of her eyes so she could see him more clearly.

“They should have never put you here,” he went on, as though they were in the middle of a conversation, as if he knew her better than anyone.

He was almost too good-looking, like a movie star who’d wandered into the New Hampshire meadow by accident. He wore a black coat, jeans, boots, black leather gloves. He was so tall, Elv had to look up to see his face. No man had ever spoken to her that directly. Usually, Elv would have flirted or, if she was in a foul mood, walked away. But in his presence, she felt overwhelmed. She lifted her chin like a child setting out a dare, trying to undo whatever spell had befallen her.

“I’ll bet you don’t even know my name.”

He squinted through the green pollen in the air. “It’s Elv.”

Her own name sounded beautiful to her for the first time. The spell intensified twofold.

“Let’s get out of here.” Lorry had a fluid energy that took control. He grabbed her hand and they went past the stables, into the woods. The air was chilly, but the grass was green. Little bits of it were sticking to her clothes. The woods were thick, filled with birch and pine. The fiddlehead ferns were unfolding, and masses of swamp cabbage were greening, with huge, musty leaves. Lunch in the cafeteria had already been served, but no one would miss her. She often stayed with the horses until she had to be in class; sometimes she didn’t appear until the dinner hour. Julie Hagen gave her an absence note if she needed one. She was Miss Hagen’s pet, after all, the girl who had been controlled and transformed, who knew how to behave, until she found a way to escape.

As they walked along, Lorry began to tell the story of his life. He had grown up in Queens, but his parents had abandoned him and his brother. He’d been on his own from the time he was ten. He’d learned how to survive when everyone else turned away. He stopped suddenly, in midsentence, so that she crashed into him. Lorry grinned. He put a hand on her waist to steady her. His touch was hot; it spread along her body. “Unless you don’t want to hear it,” Lorry said.

“No. Tell me.” Elv was overcome with emotion. Most people were so boring, she tuned them right out, but not him. She was ready to listen. “Once you start a story you have to finish it.”

“It’s not the kind your mother told you at bedtime,” Lorry warned. “It’s scary,” he said in a fevered tone that warned her to think twice. Some stories stayed with you even when you wanted to forget them.

Still, Elv remained stubborn. “Those are the best kind of stories.”

Lorry laughed, charmed. She was such a gorgeous girl, delicious in her stubbornness and her beauty. He had good reason to charm her right back. He put everything on the slow burner; he’d let her burn and come to him. “Once upon a time,” he said and again they both laughed. There were crows calling from the trees. He waited for quiet and soon enough the noisy crows in the pines took flight. He told her he’d been on his own since they tried to beat him to death at his last foster home. It had been bad before that—at one place they’d made him stand out in the pouring rain and he’d come down with pneumonia. In another, they fed him only bread and water. In a third, they’d put pennies on his eyelids, the way they did for the dead, and he’d had to sleep without moving all night long so that the pennies didn’t shift. But the last house was the worst. They’d kept him locked in a tiny room they called his bedroom whenever he wasn’t in school. It was an airless closet. It was where they kept their trash and old shoes. When he’d had enough, he slipped a knife into his pocket in the school cafeteria. That night he cut through the ropes.