Chapter 26: The Red Moon

The rag stank of something sweet and chemical, and I knew what it was before the room tipped.

I held my breath.

I got one elbow into a face and heard something crunch.

Then the man behind me hit me in the stomach, and I breathed in.

I came back to a smell of pine logs and old fish.

My head was splitting.

I was on the floor of a log cabin with my back against a cold woodstove.

My wrists were zip-tied in front of me.

I was still in my mother's dress.

The hem was black with mud, and one sleeve had torn at the shoulder.

My left fist was still shut.

I opened it a crack.

The Queen's ring was in my palm, printed into the skin.

I closed my hand again.

There was one window.

Through it I could see gray water, and far across it a cliff with a lodge on top, small as a toy.

They'd brought me across the bay.

"She's up," a man said.

He was sitting at the table by the door, young, thick-necked, his nose swollen and purple across the bridge.

That was my elbow.

Good.

He was chewing nicotine gum.

On his belt hung a ring of keys on an orange cork float.

A boat key.

"What time is it?" I said.

He didn't answer.

The light on the water said late morning.

At noon an engine came across the bay, and Torvald walked in.

He'd shaved.

He pulled a chair out from the table and sat down in front of me, close enough that I could smell his cologne.

"Happy birthday to my nephew," he said.

"Where's Tove?"

"Asleep. A pinch of wolfsbane in her cocoa. Not enough to hurt her." He smiled. "I'm fond of Tove."

"She's the only one of them with a spine."

"And the old man at my door?"

"Sixty years on that bench," Torvald said, "and never once a seat at the head of the table. I promised him one."

"You promise a lot of people a lot of things."

"And I pay." He leaned his elbows on his knees. "You'll stay here till the moon sets. After that I don't care where you go."

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