Sophie Littlefield - Banished

Rascal sat when I told him to, his pose show-dog perfect, erect and still. When I gently pressed on his shoulders he lay down, exposing his scar. He didn’t complain as I cut the threads and tugged them out with the tweezers. It was almost as though he didn’t feel it. I wondered if somehow the accident had damaged his nerves, had taken away his feeling without hurting the rest of him, and I prayed that he was healing on the inside as well as he was on the outside. I gathered up Gram’s tools and threw the bits of thread in the trash, then shooed Rascal out of the room.

Behind me, Chub coughed and then mumbled sleepily. “Hayee. Mockingbird.”

I turned around, Rascal forgotten in my amazement. Chub had said a word-one he’d never said before, three entire syllables as clear as a bell.

“What did you say, Chub?” I asked slowly, my mouth dry.

“Mockingbird,” he repeated.

“You-you want me to sing? Sing you the mockingbird song?”

He rubbed at his eyes, nodding. Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe he hadn’t said “mockingbird” at all but some other word.

But strange things were happening. Milla, Sawyer, Rattler… nearly losing Rascal… the money and plane ticket in Gram’s room… the things I had done without even understanding what I was doing. As I lifted Chub out of his crib and hugged him tight, the words from the pages played in my head, a whispered sound track that seemed almost like it had been running, the sound turned down, all my life.

But Chub wanted me to sing. So I lay down on my bed and held him and rested my chin on his downy hair and sang his favorite lullaby until he had enough and wiggled out of my grasp and ran out of the room to find Rascal. And then I lay there a few minutes longer, wondering what was happening to me, to us.

At school I skipped lunch to go to the library and use the Internet. I’d gotten pretty good at doing research online, trying to figure out what was wrong with Chub. Not that it helped much; there were so many things that could be wrong with him, I felt like the more I read, the less I knew.

I didn’t have much more luck when I tried to research what was wrong with Rascal. I didn’t know exactly what to search for: “fast healing” brought up natural remedies and health-food sites. Searching on Rascal’s symptoms brought up “catatonia,” which involved repetitive movements and ignoring external stimuli, but that didn’t seem to be exactly what was wrong with him.

I gave up and unfolded the piece of paper on which I’d copied a few lines from the pages I found in the closet. I smoothed it out and entered the words in the search engine. Soon it became obvious that the words were Irish, and after poking around in an online Irish-English dictionary for a while I had a pretty good idea of what the lines said:

I commend to this magic

The souls and bodies of our poor countrymen

Heal this withered flesh

These torn and cursed limbs

This tainted blood

I wished I had copied the whole page. I had no idea what kind of magic the author meant, but I felt a strange excitement building inside me. Healing: could it really be a coincidence that I’d found the words after the thing that happened to Milla in the gym… and right before Rascal had been hit by the truck?

Before I left the lab, I looked up the airport code from the ticket I’d found in Gram’s room. DUB stood for Dublin… Ireland . How could the words from the pages in the closet be related to what was happening now, to the plans that Gram was making in secret?

I didn’t know who had written those words or hidden the pages in the closet. I didn’t know what Prairie Clover meant, but it still felt like those words held the key. I had to find out more, even if the one person who could help me hated me for reasons I didn’t understand. There had to be a way to make her talk to me.

I waited until school was nearly over. When the last bell rang I bolted out of class and ran down the hall to the lab, because I knew Milla had science last period. When she shuffled out of the classroom, head down, at the end of the stream of kids, I stepped in front of her and blocked her path.

I opened my mouth to ask if we could go somewhere to talk, but her expression changed from wariness to recognition, her eyes widening and her lips parting in surprise.

“Where’d you git that?” she whispered.

“What?”

“The necklace.”

My fingers went to the red stone pendant. I hadn’t taken it off since I found it in the closet. I’d kept it under my shirt at home so Gram wouldn’t see it, but at school I’d let it hang in front.

“I-I found it.”

“Did your grandmother give it to you?”

I wasn’t sure what to say. If I could have thought of a lie that would keep her talking to me, I wouldn’t have hesitated. But I had no idea what she wanted, what would hold her interest. All I could think of was to ask her if she’d go somewhere to talk to me, somewhere private. “Look, could you, could we-”

Milla shook her head, already backing away. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“But I have to talk to you. To someone. I’m-I don’t-I’ll give you-I’ll give you money if you want, I don’t have a lot but I can get more.” I could sense that in a second she would turn and run down the hall away from me. “The necklace! I’ll give it to you.”

“Don’t take it off,” she snapped. “I don’t want that thing anywhere near me.”

I wasn’t sure what it was, what it could do, but it clearly had an effect on Milla. I held the stone delicately between my finger and thumb and twisted it in the light coming through the high windows. The sun bounced off the stone and danced across Milla’s face in bloodred streaks. Her expression went from wariness to resignation.

“You won’t let it drop, will you,” she sighed. “So let’s git this over with.”

We went to one of the practice rooms by the band room, a musty space with old acoustic tiles lining the walls, and music stands and a scarred piano. There was only one chair, so we sat on the floor, our knees pulled up, the sound of someone practicing scales on a cello reaching us faintly.

I didn’t tell her everything. I told her about the men in the car, about my fears that the authorities would separate me and Chub. I didn’t tell her about Rascal-I didn’t want her to think I was crazy. I told her about the men who came to the house, the deals Gram did out of the basement.

When I talked about Rattler, Milla dropped her gaze to the floor and went still.

“What is it?” I demanded, frustrated. “What is it with him?”

Milla didn’t answer for a moment, but when she did, her voice was so flat and quiet that I could barely hear it. “Seems like you might know.”

“ Me? Why? I’ve never done anything to him-”

She jerked her head up and there was anger in her eyes. “It ain’t about what you done. Don’t you git that? Ain’t any of us Banished got any say in things. It’s all laid out.”

“Banished? I don’t-”

“That necklace you’re so proud of,” Milla said, jabbing a finger at me. “Might interest you to know that it ain’t the only one. There’s three of them come over and they’re all cursed. How do you think your grandmother got the way she is? Anyone who wears it’s cursed too.”

I touched the stone protectively. I couldn’t say why, but it seemed to me the opposite was true, that the stone was a charm keeping even worse things from happening to me. “I don’t believe you,” I whispered.

“Really? Well, your mom had one of them, and look what happened to her. That one you got’s probably hers. Your grandmother traded hers, is probably the only reason she’s still alive. Only one missing is your aunt’s, and who knows what happened to her?”