“Strong enough?”
A muscle in Haina’s jaw tenses. “Strong enough to survive.Out there.”
***
At dinner, Haina informs them that Grace’s ceremony will be taking place out on the lawn after sunset. Some of the guests cheer, others touch Grace on the arm, some of them whisper,May your hex protect you. Grace smiles back at them all, but her eyes are dark, faraway. From the other side of the table, Siobhan glowers. Elly eats with a frenzied excitement in her belly, keen for the light to disappear and the ceremony to start.It won’t be long for you, Elly, Haina had said.You are formidable. No one has ever described her in that way before. Sweet, kind, thoughtful – never formidable.
Elly and Keiko bring dessert to the table – blackberry tarts topped with bitter lemon cream – and retake their seats. Elly glances across the table at Theo. He’s barely spoken to her since their last interview, when she took his hand in hers and he pulled away. He won’t meet her eye. It makes her feel cold, exposed. Perhaps she’d read it all wrong – instead of desiring her in all of her size and strength, desiring her for the unknowable thing she’s becoming, maybe he fears it. Worse yet, maybe he just doesn’t care.
She’s about to say his name when there’s a loud sound: a groan that sounds like it’s coming from beneath theirfeet. Then, a shrill whine, like a creature with its leg in a trap. Suddenly, the room is filled with glass. It hurls itself inwards, shards the size of wine bottles raining like bullets from the sky.
Elly is aware of two things happening almost simultaneously: one of those shards falling towards her face, then a strong pressure knocking her sideways, causing the edge of the table to jam into her ribs, right above her belly.
Screams puncture the air. There’s a whipping wind and a new cold in the room, uninvited and fierce.
Elly opens her eyes. There’s glass everywhere, blood everywhere, though she doesn’t know who any of it belongs to. The screaming voices are wild, mad as wolves on the hunt. The sound runs rings around the room. Elly’s head feels tight. Her side is throbbing. Distantly, she thinks,The baby, the baby. Theo is on top of her, looking down, frantically grabbing her face and holding it to the light.
“Are you hurt?” he demands, his voice like hammered metal. “Lookat me, Elly. Are you hurt?”
Elly peers down at herself, at the floor, where bowls have been upturned and cutlery dropped. Her body feels numb and faraway, but it’s barely marked. The baby tumbles in her belly, pressing its elbows out against the taut skin of her abdomen.I’m here. I’m here.
“I don’t think so,” she says, struggling to get her breath.
Theo helps her to her feet. Tiny shards of smashed glass make a silvery sound as they hit the floor, dropping from the creases in their clothes. The other guests look at each other in bewilderment, at the cuts on each other’s faces. And then they look up. There are gaping holesin the refectory roof. The frames which held the panes in place are warped and rusted. Had they always been like that? The panes themselves have fallen out like teeth from loose gums, but it was almost as if they had been blown inwards by a mighty force. As if the house were under attack. For some reason, it makes Elly think of the rotten bananas in the cupboard, the burst pipe in the bathroom. She closes her eyes and sees skeletons sagging, wood rotting. Haina is looking upwards, too, her eyes flashing, fists clenched at her sides. There is something weary about her expression; a tiredness that goes beyond a lack of sleep, the kind of tiredness that reaches deep into the bones. She starts to move around the room, checking each person, putting her fingers to their cuts, dabbing at them with the hem of her dress and staining it dark. Most of the guests are stunned and wide-eyed, but it doesn’t seem as if anyone is too badly hurt.
Elly runs her hands over the skin of her upper arms. A spear of glass had been heading straight towards her. What would have happened, if Theo hadn’t shoved her to the side? She looks at him now. There’s a deep scratch on his forearm. Elly offers him a napkin from the table. He hesitates then accepts, mopping up the beads of blood. Every time someone moves, there’s the electric crunch of glass underfoot. If Elly concentrates, she can still hear it: the low rumbling under the house’s foundations that had come before the shattered windows.
Siobhan is the first to speak. “What the fuck?” Her voice is hard and loud, cutting through the room.
No one responds. Haina is staring up at the shattered glass panes again. She looks as though she might cry,or maybe scream. Eventually, she says, “This house is very old.” She rubs a hand over her face, massaging the features. “And it is very tired.” Siobhan opens her mouth to say something else, but before she can, Haina addresses the room. “Let’s think of happier things. It’s time for the ceremony. We can clean all this up later.”
She picks her way across the debris towards the refectory door, and after a moment, the rest of the guests, still slow and bewildered, begin to follow her.
Elly is clammy all over, and there’s the strangest sensation inside her stomach, as if she’s been travelling too fast, but she’s unharmed. “You protected me,” she manages to say to Theo.
Theo looks away, uncomfortable. He doesn’t answer. Elly becomes aware of someone watching them from further back down the hallway. Siobhan. She isn’t smiling.
The lawn stretches between the pond at the back of the house to the treeline at the edge of the woods, a flat expanse of lush green grass framed by colourful borders. Haina holds Grace’s arm gently, and together they stand near the treeline while the rest of the guests form a loose crowd around them. At first, Elly can’t concentrate on what’s about to happen. All she can think about is glass, the noise it made, the ragged holes in the refectory roof. But then Haina starts to talk, and her uneasiness dissolves at the sound of her steady voice.
“My angels, we’re here tonight for Grace,” Haina says, “to show her how much we love her. And to decide whether or not she’s ready to leave us.”
Elly swallows thickly. She’s been so preoccupied by the particulars of the ceremony, she hadn’t paid much mind towhat might happen afterwards. The thought of working in the kitchens every day without Grace’s calm presence, her tireless energy, her low, melodic voice – it makes her feel empty.
At the front of the crowd, Haina has taken Grace in her arms. The two women embrace, and even from this distance, Elly can see that Haina’s cheeks are glistening. Grace’s expression doesn’t give much away. She looks serious, resigned. Is she thinking of Lakshmi, the way she’d dropped from the sky? Is she thinking of what’s waiting for her beyond the woods?
“You have the love of the whole house,” Haina says.
This time, Elly is ready to join in with the chorus of voices.May your hex protect you, they call into the night.May your hex protect you, Grace.
Grace gives a nod, and Haina steps aside. The only light in the garden is the pale illumination of the moon. The evening world is full of noise: buzzards scouring the forest for a meal, toads making their gasping croaks down by the pond. Even so, Elly feels as though she can hear the breathing of every guest standing around her, could pick out their heartbeats by sound alone. These heightened senses are new, she knows. Close by, Theo’s pulse is quick but steady. Without his camera, he seems incomplete, at a loss. A few metres away, Siobhan’s irritation at not being able to film the ceremony seems to have dissolved into curiosity. She watches Grace closely with her dark eyes.
“I’m ready,” Grace whispers, and the crowd begins to shout. Elly had almost forgotten how it felt to become tangled up in that net of cruel words: like being restrained by the kind of twine that cuts the skin.
“It was your fault she died.”
“She took her own life because of you.”
The words become louder, more insistent. Someone picks up a clod of earth from a nearby border and hurls it at Grace. Grace sees it coming and lets it pelt her full force in the chest. Haina looks on, smiling serenely.
