But they backed down the steps, ran into the trees again, hooting and hollering with relief that they had survived the Marsh Girl, the Wolf Child, the girl who couldn’t spell dog. Their words and laughter carried back to her through the forest as they disappeared into the night, back to safety. She watched the relit candles, bobbing through the trees. Then sat staring into the stone-quiet darkness. Shamed.
Kya thought of that day and night whenever she saw wild turkeys, but she was thrilled to see the tail feather on the stump. Just to know the game was still on.
14.
Red Fibers
1969
Muggy heat blurred the morning into a haze of no sea, no sky. Joe walked out of the sheriff’s building and met Ed getting out of the patrol truck. “C’mon over here, Sheriff. Got more from the lab on the Chase Andrews case. Hot as a boar’s breath inside.” He led the way to a large oak, its ancient roots punching through the bare dirt like fists. The sheriff followed, crunching acorns, and they stood in the shade, faces to the sea breeze.
He read out loud. “‘Bruising on the body, interior injuries, consistent with an extensive fall.’ He did bang the back of his head on that beam—the blood and hair samples matched his—which caused severe bruising and damage to the posterior lobe but didn’t kill him.
“There you have it; he died where we found him, had not been moved. The blood and hair on the crossbeam prove it. ‘Cause of death: sudden impact on occipital and parietal lobe of the posterior cerebral cortex, severed spine’—from falling off the tower.”
“So somebody did destroy all the foot- and fingerprints. Anything else?”
“Listen to this. They found lots of foreign fibers on his jacket. Red wool fibers that didn’t come from any of his clothes. Sample included.” The sheriff shook a small plastic bag.
Both men peered at the fuzzy red threads flattened against the plastic like spider webbing.
“Wool, it says. Could be a sweater, scarf, hat,” Joe said.
“Shirt, skirt, socks, cape. Hell, it could be anything. And we have to find it.”
15.
The Game
1960
The next noon, hands on her cheeks, Kya approached the stump slowly, almost in prayer. But no feather on the stump. Her lips pinched.
“A’ course. I gotta leave something for him.”
Her pocket brought a tail feather from an immature bald eagle she’d found that morning. Only someone who knew birds well would know this splotchy, tatty feather was eagle. A three-year-old, not yet crowned. Not as precious as the tail feather of the tropicbird, but still a dear thing. She laid it carefully on the stump with a little rock on top, pinned from the wind.
That night, arms folded under her head, she lay on her porch bed, a slight smile on her face. Her family had abandoned her to survive a swamp, but here was someone who came on his own, leaving gifts for her in the forest. Uncertainty lingered, but the more she thought about it, the less likely it seemed the boy meant her harm. It didn’t fit that anyone who liked birds would be mean.
The next morning, she sprang from bed and went about doing what Ma had called a “deep clean.” At Ma’s dresser, Kya meant only to cull the remnants of the drawers, but as she picked up her mother’s brass-and-steel scissors—the finger holes curled and shaped with intricate patterns of lilies—she suddenly pulled back her hair, not trimmed since Ma left more than seven years ago, and cut off eight inches. Now it fell just below her shoulders. She looked at herself in the mirror, tossed her head a bit, smiled. Scrubbed her fingernails and brushed her hair till it shone.
Replacing the brush and scissors, she looked down among some of Ma’s old cosmetics. The liquid foundation and rouge had dried and cracked, but the shelf life of lipstick must be decades because when she opened a tube, it looked fresh. For the first time, never having played dress-up as a little girl, she put some on her lips. Smacked, then smiled again in the mirror. Thought she looked a bit pretty. Not like Ma, but pleasing enough. She giggled, then wiped it off. Just before closing the drawer, she saw a bottle of dried-up Revlon fingernail polish—Barely Pink.
Kya lifted the little jar, remembering how Ma had walked back from town one day with this bottle of fingernail polish, of all things. Ma said it would look real good with their