–If Father treated me badly he’d stop being my father.

–Ha! You think he treats you well?

–He does.

–So well you have to sneak around to see me. So well he puts you to work everyday.

–It’s not work. It’s what I was made for.

–Looks a lot like labour – and poorly paid.

He was arguing now for the sake of it, as was his way.

–Well, whatever about anything else, Father is set to do something.

–Like what?

–I don’t know. Something to keep us apart.

He looked into the trees. I couldn’t see his eyes for the shadowy shade. I said

–We’ll leave.

He looked at me. His eyes still a band of black.

–We will?

–Yes.

His face creasing and uncreasing. The quiver in his mouth.

–I need you to come get me at the house tonight, without the truck. Come for me after dark and I’ll be ready.

–Without the truck?

–Yes.

–But a storm is coming.

–Father will hear it if you bring the truck.

He took a breath and held it, started nodding.

–All right?

–All right.

I’d a plan that I didn’t know would work. I’d had to come up with it so quick. It’d be long, it’d make me weary, it’d cause me some pain and it’d be risky, and it’d all be undone if Father wasn’t in the form to hunt because of the storm.

He drove me back up the road. Before I got out of the car I straightened my dress, said

–Is that why you like being with me?

Looking at me blank.

–Is that why you don’t mind being with me the way I am? Not a Cure, and everything else.

–What’s everything else? What Olivia’s done?

I thought of a small, freckled Samson. I couldn’t picture Olivia as a child.

–Dammit Ada. You think you’re so strange. You’re not that strange. Strangest thing about you is you don’t get sick and tired of everyone complaining at you all the time.

His face as open to me as a book or a flower.

I couldn’t help it; started laughing.

Melinda Sacran

I saw her in the woods and she was lying with a wolf.

I was twelve and I ran away from home and I saw her with her arms around the wolf and it was licking her neck.

Licking her like she was sweating gravy.

I ran all the way home again and had a fever for days but I had to hide it because if I was sick I’d be taken to her.

Been hiding and ignoring sicknesses my whole life.

People tried to tell me I was seeing things but I saw her.

I saw her.

I still dream about that long pink tongue and her with her head back. Laughing.

I got back to the house and Father was clucking into The Burial Patch.

He heard me come onto the patio and turned around.

–Going hunting later?

He looked at my wet smock and my mussed hair.

–How was your walk?

There was a bulge in my throat that I hoped didn’t show.

–I’ll stop seeing him.

He picked up the shovel and wedged it in The Ground.

–Just like that?

–He wouldn’t give me any straight answers.

In the sunshine he was glowing. His grey-blond hair looked like a cap of pure light.

–You’ll find something else that pleases you.

–I will.

He nodded.

–Well, I’m glad.

I looked at my dusty feet, and when he didn’t say anything else I went inside.

About an hour or so later, the storm started. Quiet at first, and then all of a sudden the trees were thrashing and the windows and doors were shaking in their frames. I had to keep relighting the stove.

Once the sun went down, I could see Father itching to go. He draped his shirt and pants over a kitchen chair and started rolling his shoulders, wiggling his jaw. He dropped to all fours and looked back at me, squatted with kindling on my knees. It suited him better, his animal gait. Though his limbs were modelled on a Cure male they were always ready to bend, his shoulders happily slinking forward and his hips rising behind him, the muscles in his legs pulled taut and presenting themselves. I think it was a mistake in his making, but one that suited him. Now in the kitchen he clicked and clucked, his tongue for the moment giving up speech, and I said –Enjoy, Father. See you in the morning.

The twigs crackled orange when I tossed them in the stove. Made the kitchen tiles look flushed like too-warm cheeks.

An hour or so went by and the storm grew and grew and I was too restless to say inside. I went out to the porch, and so I saw him when he came. I saw him come out of the trees. Bobbing ball of white which was his shirt catching the occasional sliver of moonlight. He staggered a little side to side with the wind and his boots heavy with mud. He looked cautiously toward the house and I waved my arms over my head so he could see me through the rain.

He’d a jacket on over his shirt but he’d left the jacket open and it was all wet through.

–Come in for a minute, to dry.

–Your father?

–He’s out. We’ll be gone before he’s back.

If he wondered at Father being out he didn’t say. Probably he was too cold to question why I’d lied.