Page 30 of Wateredge

“I mean…” Lark was suddenly at a loss for words.

“I don’t want you to move out, little bird. I like coming home to you puttering in my kitchen or singing your quiet songs that you think I never notice. You’ve started singing more in the past month, by the way. Did you know that?”

Lark shook her head. She had no idea she was singing at all. Victoria looked at her expectantly, eyes narrowed and shrewd. Okay, so Lark was clearly missing something. She waited for a beat, another, then the curiosity and concern of Victoria’s gaze finally reached her.

“Is there something you want to know?”

Victoria’s shoulders moved, a deflation as much as a relaxation.

“When you arrived, I told the girls that I don’t believe you are in trouble as much as troubled. I still believe that.”

Lark bit the inside of her cheek, listening to what might come next, because something was for sure coming. She could feel the room grow smaller, shadows moving in the swept-up corners.

“I looked up Lark Thibodeaux. A Lark Thibodeaux doesn’t currently exist.”

Ah, of course.

Lark wanted to say it out loud, except her entire being was now focused in her throat, preventing her from breathing. Victoria sat mercifully still in the encroaching silence, waiting. Lark knew she didn’t have to say much of anything else; this had been more than enough. It was Lark’s turn to speak. This woman had given her enough rope to hang herself, after all.

“She did once. And I hope when all is said and done, she will again. She is really trying.” Lark meant to say it louder, meant to infuse it with more pride, more strength. Instead, it came out in a weird, panicky choke that sounded like a sob.

Victoria said nothing; her stillness was encouragement enough for Lark to continue speaking, and yet Lark felt like there would never be enough words. Never be enough air to get it all out of her.

But then Victoria broke the silence in the manner a surgeon slices off a tumor.

“There’s a bag under your bed.”

Lark felt her blood drain from her face entirely. In the ensuing silence, she could hear her own breathing. Loud. Guilty.

“It’s a go bag,” she said uselessly, trusting that Victoria had not opened it. Trusting that Victoria had not looked inside. “In case I need to run,” she added, and her lungs felt as if they had been sliced off along with the tumor. She couldn’t draw air. Her hand rose to her own throat, the pulse there going wild. The tears were just the last humiliation, her eyes stinging with them, blurry, useless.

“Is anyone chasing you?” Victoria’s words and hands both landed on her, quiet and soothing, long arthritic fingers drawing circles on her palms.

“No.” Lark pushed the word out the way one strikes a baseball, praying for a home run, settling for a clean hit. Neither came to pass. “I don’t know. He shouldn’t be looking. No one should be,” was what she ended up with. The fingers on her skin did not stop. There was a faint golden glow to them now, and Lark watched as it seeped into her, as it comforted her. Calmed her.

“Is this… Are you…” She dared not say the words. And what words would she even say? Magic? Witch? That was perhaps the most ridiculous thing anyone had ever uttered in her presence. And yet the book in her lap told of a different story, of a different reality. She looked down at it, the warmth still radiating from Victoria’s fingers into the lifelines on Lark’s palms.

“Legend of the Crow. The History of Dragons Island and Its Magic,” Lark read out loud, and Victoria’s smile twitched briefly at the corners of her mouth.

Legends of the Crow… Abigail Crowhart… Elizabeth Crowhart… Salem Trials…

Lark finally lifted her eyes from the cover of the book where the perfect drawing of a bird stared at her unblinkingly, perhaps even judging her for being slow. Three months of living in this house, and surely she should have noticed.

Except she had noticed. How many times had she thought of this or that incident being a touch strange? A touch weird. A touch magical.

The fingers on her palm stopped now, but the warmth persisted, making her breathing slow, making her eyes grow heavy.

Legends of the Crow… Crow…

“Crowhart,” Lark murmured, and the smile playing at Victoria’s mouth bloomed.

“You catch on, songbird.”

They sat in the twilight, the book in Lark’s lap suddenly leaden, the weight of the information in it more precious somehow. She kept stealing glances at it.

“Little bookworm. You won’t find the truth in books, child. Go talk to the sea. To the cliffs. Better yet, speak to my nieces. They are much better at it than I ever will be.”

Lark gasped, and Victoria squeezed her wrist.