“Let ‘em all run naked like when we was kids.” I hear Papaw say as I slide into the hallway, quietly closing the bedroom door behind me.

I fell asleep somewhere between the start of Emm’s snoring and the early morning hour when the boys came home. They were very quiet and I did not awaken when Seph and Mephi shoe-horned themselves into the bed.

When my eyes opened, just moments ago, Seph’s back was in my face, Emm’s hot breath was on the back of my neck, and Mephi was wedged crosswise between our feet and the footboard. The touch of his elbow on my ticklish soles brought me out of my slumber, but it was the sunlight through the window and the chirp of birds that would not let me return to my dreams.

Nana’s house, in broad daylight, is a stifling place, whether under the hot summer sun, or in the winter when the windows are shuttered up and the fireplace is crackling loudly. The air is always thick and stuffy, and it makes my nose the same way. I have never felt comfortable here.

Beneath the thick quilt, sandwiched between Emm and Seph, the bed is triple unbearable and not in any way an easy place to extricate oneself from. Emm nearly got a taste of my toes when I fought to keep my balance on the soft mattress, while stepping over her head. Now I am safe on the hardwood floor, the smell of bacon and other goodies filling my nostrils, the lack of Eternal Stew no longer a concern to me. There are tastier things waiting for me out there in the kitchen. Still I pause, listening.

“Someone’s awake,” Nana says, when a board betrays me with a creak.

“Probably Ravenna,” Papaw decides. “She’s the only one what’s got any creep to her.”

“C’mon out baby. Are you hungry?” Nana asks, knowing the question will suit whichever of her grandkids is out of bed.

I’m hungry and my cover’s blown, so I do as she asks, stepping out of the dark hallway, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, pretending I am not awake enough for eavesdropping.

“I shoulda bet on it,” Papaw says. He grabs a plate and starts piling it full. Bacon, biscuits, sausage gravy, eggs, no one eats like this. No one in the city. No one I know. Cheeters maybe? I imagine this is the sort of fair Miranda wakes up to before she chooses which of her colorful tunics she will wear between her morning and afternoon baths.

I bet she changes clothes at least twice a day, birthday party or not.

I would.

“I think some of your Pa’s old clothes will fit you,” Nana tells me.

I am already shoveling food into my mouth. I am too focused on the presence of both bacon and sausage gravy to acknowledge her. This is more meat in one sitting than I’ve had all year.

“I can probably find some old ones of mine for Emm,” Nana continues, laying out her plan, bouncing Jinn on her knee.

My baby sister is double-fisting strips of bacon, taking turns putting the left and the right strips in her mouth in turn, or sometimes both at the same time. Her three small teeth are working overtime, her eyes are saucered and bright. She doesn’t seem to have noticed my arrival.

I take a break from my own meal just long enough to cuff the back of her round head softly, burrowing my fingers into her soft hair, scritching her scalp with my nails. I’m not her favorite, and she has bacon. Her eyes never leave it. She pays me no mind. I turn back to my own plate, wishing I knew Nana’s secret, or Emm’s. There is magic between them and Jinn that I will never understand.

“I can take some of yours in for Seph,” Nana tells Papaw. “Mephi is nearly as big as Rav, so it’s just this little sugar to think of.” She bounces Jinn, nuzzling her nose. Jinn’s grin widens and her eyes flash. She offers Nana a bite of her bacon. Nana pretends to chomp it. Jinn giggles.

“I told ya. Let her run naked,” Papaw says.

“I have plenty of cloth scraps. I’m sure I can figure something out.”

“I’m sorry Nan,” Emm says, plopping herself into the chair next to me. “I don’t know what got into me. I’ll help with breakfast tomorrow. I promise.”

If the floorboards announced her entrance, I missed it. The veil of my longing muffled their creaking.

“It’ll be nice to have some help around here,” Nana says. “But no chores until tomorrow. Take today to get settled.” Papaw hands Emm a plate and lets her fill it herself. It’s a subtle thing, but one that sticks in my craw. I suppose I’m too young in his eyes to help myself.

Papaw is handy. He knows what he’s about. He knows how to get things done. He doesn’t see the same qualities in me.

The crib Jinn slept in last night is the same one that cradled my father when he was a babe. Papaw made it. The house Pa grew up in is old but solid. It was built by my Papaw with his own calloused hands. The food we’re eating is the product of his sweat and blood. There are no markets this far from town. Self-sufficiency is a way of life, and Nana and Papaw are expert practitioners of that very practical magic. It is as much a mystery to me as the spells Nana and Emm cast over Jinn’s heart.

“You can sew, can’t you Emm,” Nana asks.

“Some. But I don’t get much time to practice, with school and all,” Emma admits.

I wonder if our parents really did us a favor by moving us to the city. Reading and writing are important, my grandparents can do it, but what about all the lessons we kids haven’t learned? Little things Nana and Papaw take for granted that seem like sorcery to me. How do you get sausage gravy to taste this good? What part of the pig does this bacon come from? How many geese did they have to pluck to make the mattress I slept on last night?

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“Plenty of time for practice out here,” Nan says.

“Did she say what happened,” Seph asks. I didn’t hear him either. The floorboards only seem to be against me.

“She will, when she’s ready. Eat,” Nana commands, handing him a plate.

To my relief, he obeys without another word. I’m not ready for another grilling. Mephi comes in right behind Seph. Even he gets to fill his own plate.

“Have some more,” Papaw says, adding a fresh biscuit to my dwindling pile and ladling gravy over it. “If you don’t eat it, the dogs will, and they’re gettin’ too fat!”

***

Pa’s hand-me-downs fit tight with a full belly. Two plates in I pronounce breakfast a done deal.

In spite of Nana’s proclamation on chores, Emm starts stacking dishes for washing. “Go make the bed,” she commands when I try to help her. I do, but not because she told me to. Working alone in the bedroom I have time to process.

“Four is an evil number,” I decide. It is the harbinger of death. Four outhouse doors followed by four pieces of meat in my stew should have been an omen. Four times Emm tried to coax me from our bed. Four Cheeter girls on the street took four minutes to pass us. Four birthday presents bought for someone else. Four Kings emerging from a shop, cementing my misfortune. Four is now my least favorite number. One is next on the list. Normally I like one, being a solitary person, but I am reminded that there is only one more day between me and adulthood. Fig you too, One.

I don’t know what thirteen is going to look like now. Every year past it is just as blurry. Everything is changing. The Razor’s Edge is not straight.

“Try these,” Nana commands, her arms full of clothes no one has worn in years. I pick through the pile separating out the blacks and sufficiently dark grays. There aren’t many. Just four pairs of pants. “Pants are better for country life,” Nana says, not that it matters. I didn’t own any dresses before yesterday. I woke up this morning with the same amount.

“Your apartment was picked clean. Someone got in there before Beel got there.”

My Papaw, to her, is just Beel. I suppose he has always been her Beel. It’s probably the only name she has ever called him.

“Figgin Cheeters,” I say, when it hits me just how much we’ve lost.

“I’ll have none of that cursing,” she warns. She and Beel are probably the only Heathens who don’t curse. I haven’t the slightest clue why.

I don’t know the rules of this house, I realize. I am not a country girl. I don’t know how to be an adult. Without school’s rigid structure I am clueless as to how I should occupy my time, and time is now something I have in abundance. My vision tunnels the way it did in the market, only this time it stretches out into an eternity of minutes that I must figure out how to spin into something meaningful.

The weight of that responsibility nearly topples me. Nana doesn’t notice. I steady myself, but now the walls are closing in. I can’t get any air through my suddenly stuffy nose. I forgot how stifling this house is.

“Go play. I’ll put these away,” Nana says, not a moment too soon.

***

I was safer in the house, but it’s too late to go back now. Seph and Mephi are waiting for me. They cut off my retreat. Volunteering to cut firewood was just a pretense to set up their ambush.

“What happened Rav?” Seph asks as they close in on me. I angle across the yard to escape them. My mind is focused on finding a hole to hide in; One that they cannot dig me out of. They speed up. I speed up. I am not a good runner. I am a terrible fighter. If it were just Mephi I could wrestle him into submission. Probably.

There’s no point in delaying the inevitable. It’s going to be a chase, no matter what. I start to run. They run after me.

“Seph,” Nana calls from the porch. “Come help me get some stuff from the attic!”

Just in the nick of time, again.

Magic.

My brothers turn back. I don’t stop running.

I know this farm. I’ve been here plenty of times. At least, I know the yard directly around the house. I’m not one for exploration. When my siblings ventured into the countryside, I never followed. I do know the barn. I’ve been that far. I know the wolf pens are behind it, but my mind is tunneling, searching out a hole. It overlooks things when it’s like this.

Growling, snarling, snapping and yapping. That is how Papaw’s wolves greet me. Their teeth gnash and they throw themselves violently against the wire mesh and wood slats. I know they cannot get me, but my heart and my feet seem ignorant of that fact. I am running flat out now, desperate for a dark place to curl up. I am not a good runner. I am a better hider.

The house is old, abandoned long before I was born. Its front door stands wide open, welcoming me, promising darkness and safety. I am through it before I can think twice. The kitchen won’t do. There are too many windows. The basement door entices me, calling me into the pitch below. I’m on the stairs, the door shut behind me, shuffling down them, nearly tripping when I reach the dirt floor. The wonderful stygian black embraces me, welcoming me in. I turn and move past the stairs toward the back wall where the thickest darkness lies. My hands pat the empty air, probing it, taking over for my useless eyes. My ears and my nose pick up the slack.

My nostrils twinge to musty leather and mildewed linen before my fingers find the source of those odors. A few more pats, then my hands speak to me, telling me what they’ve found. There’s a wooden bench here, perhaps an old pew, with blankets and tanned hides piled on its backrest. It’s perfect. I curl up on it, closing my eyes, settling the rest of my senses until only my heart beat breaks the silence.

Calm, I tell it. It is time to calm down.

It takes a few moments, then its thumping fades too. Only sweet silence remains, punctuated by my annoying thoughts. My brain wants to have a conversation. I am powerless to stop it.

This is the Land of the Dead that Ma told us about, where Heathens sleep away their dreamless eternity.

Good. I need a nap.

What if you do not wake from this one?

Even better. I’m tired of…” The list of things I’m tired of is too long so I sum it up with, “I’m just tired. And I can’t stop talking to myself.”

The longer I lay on the bench, the more my eyes adjust to the darkness. There is a sliver of white light bouncing down from the crack under the stair door and splashing across the far wall in a bright line. It is as annoying to me as the half-moon beam in the outhouse was. I cannot move this ray either. I must find another way to escape it.

I tug a thick blanket free of the pile behind me, spreading it over me, pulling it tight around my head and body, blocking out even that miniscule amount of light.

My eyes are happy. My heart is calming. It’s too bad I can’t smother my intrusive thoughts.

Alysium. That’s the name of the Land of the Dead.

Shut up. No one cares.

The Cheeters have their Feast, and if Emma’s friend is right, their Heel. They can have them. I want neither. They both imply an active afterlife. I don’t even want an active life.

Until yesterday I thought Heel was just another curse word. I have used it without knowing what it actually means. Living forever, being tortured forever definitely sounds like the last place I would want to be, and now that I think about it, I don’t know that I can ever invite anyone to go there again, as I have in the past.

No. Alysium is the place for me. It promises only sweet, dreamless sleep.

I’m thinking too much. Look at all the thoughts I had because of that one word, Alysium.

I need to focus on not focusing.

Moving the blanket stirred up the dust. My nose twitches but I hold back the sneeze. There’s a cough down deep in my throat. I swallow, nipping it in the bud. My body is fighting my desire for peace and quiet. My eyelids are heavy.

Heavier than they should be.

Why am I suddenly so tired?

I just woke up two hours ago.

Something doesn’t feel right.

I am going to die here.

OK.

No. Not OK.