Page 65 of The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells
“I believe that Carrie and I weren’t meant to be, and we never should have gone along with that wedding. We never should have let it get so far along. And I know, without any doubt, not even a shadow of it, that I love you. That I loved you as soon as I really saw you. And I should have welcomed Carrie home this autumn. I should have talked to her years ago. I should have called the wedding off myself and—and tried to make amends. For your sake.”
Jess breathes out, the air in the deepest part of her lungs expelling as she exhales. “It feels like we’ve all been suspended in that wedding day for a decade. Like we’re all trapped in the wedding that should have been. Not just us, but the whole town.”
“Yeah.”
Jess’s phone rings and she grabs for it, and Tom helps her stand as they both huddle over the bars of signal. When the voice connects on the other end, she cries.
They’ve found her.
She’s still alive.
Chapter 50
Carrie
At first, it feels like a dream. Like I am being lifted out of the real world, out of my own body. I can’t pin myself to my own existence anymore, it is just a rush of words and colors and faint prickles of sensation. All I remember is my arms curled around him, and how quickly the warmth of our shared bodies drained away. I’m in an in-between space—not dreaming, yet not awake either, and the imprint of his body, the ghost of it, is all I’m clinging to as I’m wrenched across that threshold.
“Water?” I croak. My tongue lolls behind my gums, ten times thicker than normal. My throat is as slender as a needle, swollen, and filled with sandpaper as I blink into the quiet. I last had a drink as the sun set, before I found Matthieu. The rest I gave to him. I slowly begin to stir, begin to see that the world around me is no longer filled with frost and darkness. Everything is coated in a fine haze, but the smell is antiseptic, like lemons and cleaning products.
“Shit, she’s awake. What do I press? Do I call someone? Tom, get a nurse, get that doctor.”
I frown as a face hovers over me. “Jess, your hair’s in my face.”
“Sorry, sorry! Tom! She’s lucid! Get that nurse!” Jess’s face comes into view again, and her shaking palm strokes my cheek. “Carrie? Carrie, I’m here. We’re both here. Say something else, anything—”
“My throat hurts.”
Jess releases a sob and drops her head to my chest. I smile, at least I think I do, and move my arms, trying to embrace her. They’re heavy, limp, and tired, but I manage to balance them on her shoulder blades. She sighs heavily, releasing a long breath. “Don’t do that again. Never, ever do that again. You scared the shit out of me.”
“Jess...” My whole being wells up, and I don’t know if I’m dreaming, if I’m awake, if this is something I’m willing into being, having her here with me, but I want to cling to it. I want to stay in this moment, with this woman I’ve missed like a hollow in my heart. If I am dreaming this moment, if my body is still slumped beside Matthieu’s on the mountain, then at least I have this. At least my memories, my mind, have pieced this together for me.
At least I now have peace.
“Jess, I missed you. I missed you so much.”
She clings to me, crying quietly, and the heaviness is too hard to lift any longer. My eyes shutter closed, and an ache spreads out, coating me, pressing me lower. I’m so tired. I’m so, so tired. From the hike across the mountains, from the worry gripping my chest... I slip beneath the fatigue, as though into an inky lake, and my world goes dark with sleep once more.
In that inky lake, there is only me and the quiet. A vastness surrounds me, warm, soft as velvet. Memories surface, of Jess, of the two of us, of Tom and the mountains and Ivy. I’m standing in my grandmother’s kitchen. The radio is tuned to some tinny classical concerto, and Ivy is nursing a batch of griddle cakes on the stovetop. I can smell them, that bready, sweet scent hanging like a cloud.
“Ivy?” I say, my voice fainter than I’ve ever heard it.
She smiles and turns toward me, rubbing her hands down herred-and-white-striped apron. “You’re not meant to be here yet. You have to go back.”
I blink, and I’m with Jess. We’re walking to school, our arms linked, my rucksack bumping against the small of my back. She’s talking really fast about a book she read, about how maybe she wants to be an author one day, about how Woodsmoke is so small, how the world is so big—
Then we’re standing at the lookout, and the whole of Woodsmoke is bathed in moonlight beneath us. Blood wells from a tiny cut in her outstretched hand, and when she clasps my hand, the cut on my own a twin to hers, we grin in the dark as we whisper,Sisters.
And we’re just eighteen, in the bar on the edge of town, screaming along to Tom’s band with our sticky drinks and sweaty faces, all red and different, as if the night has turned us into ghouls—
Then I’m alone, on the mountain. Standing at the lookout once more, staring down at Woodsmoke, and it’s spring. The frost has thawed, and there’s green in the fields. I cup my hands around my mouth, draw in a fresh gulp of air and bellow—
There is beeping, and a sterile sweetness to the air. I glance around and see I’m not in Ivy’s cottage, or walking the track to school, or at the lookout. I look down at myself and see a white hospital gown stretching over my chest. I move my hand, run my fingers along the scratchy fabric of the bedcovers. Then I notice people. Voices. A hand reaches for mine and carefully pulls it into a clasp. When I look up, I see it’s Jess, holding my hand, and I don’t fully understand.
“Two days,” the doctor is telling me, and telling Jess, who sits at my side, her hand now tight around mine. I snap my eyes to the doctor, the one with a buzz cut and heavy features. I’ve met him before, I’m sure of it. Maybe yesterday, maybe this morning... Inibble on my bottom lip, tugging at the dry skin, trying to anchor myself, to convince myself that this hospital, this gown I’m wearing, it’s all real. “She’s going to slip in and out, but everything is looking good. Heart rate steady, no signs of infection. We’re going to push fluids, and you can start to get her talking.”
“Will there be permanent damage?” Jess asks, then swallows, looking down at me. “Sorry, that was insensitive.”
“It’s okay,” I manage, my words slurring together.
