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Eventually they had no choice but to watch in shifts so Evelyn could do her watering and Lily could start on the supper. Evelyn completed her tasks as quickly as she could, worried about leaving her sister alone with the thing. She couldn’t say whose safety she feared for more, her sister’s or the creature’s.

When Evelyn finally came in for supper, they cleaned the mess that had been left on the kitchen floor and wordlessly chewed their way through a bowl of barley stew. There seemed no way of addressing what had happened. The thing in the icehouse was not just inarticulate but somehow beyond language entirely. When they had finished, Lily let her spoon rattle in the bowl, then said:

“We’re all right, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” said Evelyn.

“If we just leave it, it’ll take care of itself.”

“Yes, probably.”

“It’ll just starve.”

Evelyn didn’t reply to that.

“It won’t get out in the meantime, will it?”

“Not likely. Trussed up like a chicken.” Evelyn paused. “Speaking of which.”

She went out to put the hens into their coops, and by the time she’d got back, her sister was wrapped up in their bed. Their bowls were left unwashed on the kitchen table.

Evelyn got under the blankets with Lily, and they both tossed and turned for a long time. Evelyn was too hot and her sweat felt dirty and viscous on her body. She stuck a leg out to cool herself, then tore off the blankets completely.

She’d thought her sister was asleep, but Lily said, suddenly:

“Are you scared?”

Evelyn lay still for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

“Good,” said Lily. “If you’re not, then I’m not.”

In truth, Evelyn was scared—but not, she thought, for the same reasons as her sister. Lily began breathing heavily, and then snoring, but Evelyn remained alert and wide-eyed. The moon was up and so bright it seemed as though night had not come at all. She could see every flake and crack in the ceiling plaster, every cobweb.

Twice Evelyn thought of getting up and going to the icehouse. She did not understand where the urge came from. Curiosity, perhaps, but there was more to it than that. Each time she imagined opening the gate her heart began to thump, as if she were already guilty of something, just by thinking it. Just being awake so long past their prescribed bedtime was transgression enough. Sometimes she thought she could hear the creature’s whimpering, though the icehouse was too far away and the kitchen door was closed. Then she thought she heard Mama reprimanding her. Each voice seemed as real and as unbelievable as the other.

An hour passed in this state of paralysis. Then two. Then, without any warning, her body roused itself, almost without Evelyn’s permission, and she slipped out from beneath their blankets and padded silently to the other side of the kitchen. She filled her battered hip flask with water and spooned the remains of the barley stew into her dirty bowl and took one of their remaining jars of honey down from the shelf. These she put in a wicker basket along with her sewing kit and the windup lamp. She listened for Lily’s snores, convinced herself they were not feigned, and went out into the garden.

The moon was enough to light her way to the icehouse. The gravel path like a snowfield, the icehouse an igloo. She turned on the lamp when she reached the entrance, unwound the wire, and lifted the gate on its hinges so it would make less noise when she opened it. She went to the back of the icehouse and found the figure lying with its face to the wall, half out of the sack. She placed the lamp on the ground in the center. It lit the place warmly, and along with the basket and the little bowl the icehouse took on the feel of a hermit’s cave.

“I’m sorry about Lily,” she said.

It didn’t move. Only the tiniest shift in its tattered cape suggested it was alive at all.

“I’ve brought you something.”

It seemed to stiffen.

“I don’t know if you can understand a word I’m saying.”

She bent down and laid a hand on its shoulder, and it flinched but made no attempt to get away. She rolled it over into the lamplight. Its eyes were two oily pools between the folds of its scarf.

“Let’s have a look at you, then,” she said.

She unwound the fabric from the creature’s head, feeling the weight of its skull, and brought the lamp a little closer. A pale and grimy face, flesh that yielded too easily beneath her fingers. Its hair was black—though it might not have been the same color clean—and as stiff as the wires that sprouted in certain corners of the kitchen. It looked like a memory of Lily as a child, coming home after swimming in the lake with weeds in her hair and mud between her fingers and toes.

They looked at each other. The thing blinked slowly. Tears had left pale, meandering riverbeds in the dirt on its cheeks.

Evelyn unscrewed the cap of the hip flask and brought it to the creature’s lips, but it strained away and buried its face in the ground. It was still bound at its wrists and ankles, and it curled and uncurled slowly like a worm she’d unearthed.

She pulled the thing back upright and tried again with the flask, but again it twisted its head away.

“There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s not a trick. Look.” She drank from the flask herself. She scooped some of the barley porridge from the bowl with her finger and sucked on it. “See?” she said. “It’s rather good.”

The thing turned and regarded her warily. Its mouth opened with a dry click and she saw the pink tip of its tongue, lurid in the middle of its pale face. She offered the hip flask for a third time and the creature leaned forward. She upended it, and half of the water dribbled over its chin and down its neck.

“Whoops-a-daisy,” she said. “There’s a good boy.”

She had always known this was what the thing was, though she had never seen one before. Not in this life, at least. Saying the word aloud produced a strange vertiginous feeling. As if she were on the edge of some precipice, and the darkness of the boy’s eyes was the abyss below.

He swallowed the water and coughed and then glanced at the bowl of barley.

“You want some?” said Evelyn.

He nodded.

“You can understand what I’m saying, then.”

He nodded again.

“Goodie good.”

She fed the boy spoonfuls of barley porridge, catching the spillages from his lips and cheeks as if she were feeding a baby, until the bowl was empty. The writing on his T-shirt caught her eye again. A longing for something. Somewhere she had been, once? She fancied she could taste oranges, then shook the memory from her head.

“How is your leg?” she said.

The boy looked down at the tear in his trousers as if noticing it for the first time. The fabric had a dark sheen, but the wound was not bleeding as freely as it had been.

“Come here,” said Evelyn. “I’ll do my best with it.”

He didn’t move. She came over and sat beside him. She made him lie down across her lap and unbuttoned his trousers, exposing his skinny thighs. The wound was already infected and the smell was putrid. Evelyn cleaned it as best she could with a damp cloth and found it still opened quite easily, a dark and lipless mouth. If she had left him until morning, then all might well have gone as Lily expected. Evelyn hummed to herself and took the needle and thread and the jar from inside the basket. She unscrewed the lid and stuck a finger into the cool silkiness and set about smearing the honey on his flesh. He turned away.

“It will help with the infection,” said Evelyn. “I know you’ve got a taste for it, but don’t go licking it all off again. Are you listening?”

Without waiting for an answer, she wetted the end of the thread and took a few attempts to pass it through the eye. The boy’s face was still turned to the wall when the needle went in. He cried out.

“That’s enough of that,” said Evelyn. “My sister hears you, there’ll be hell to pay. For both of us.”

She took his scarf and tied it tightly around his mouth, then continued with her work. His skin was sticky and delicate, like the skin on a bowl of soup.

When she had finished, she inspected the stitches in the lamplight. The wound would heal, but the scar would not be a neat one. Twenty years ago—ten, even—she would have made a better job of it. She shrugged and sighed.

“You’ll do,” she said, and put everything back in the basket. “I’ll bring you something else tomorrow night. I’m afraid I’ll have to keep you like this until we know you’re not going to get up to any more mischief. My sister will come around, I think. Once she’s calmed down, we can decide what to do with you.” She paused and looked at his filthy and sallow features. “I take it you don’t want to go back to where you came from?”

The boy gave no sign that he’d heard her, and Evelyn was glad. She wished she hadn’t said anything. The question of where he might have come from was still too large and dark and formless a thing for her to countenance. A door she resolved to keep locked and bolted.

The future, though. She might glance in that direction. The glimmer of something opened up before her when she looked at him. She studied his slender limbs and his unlined face. By God , she thought, he’s got years and years in him.

She closed the gate behind her and came quietly back to the house. In the kitchen Lily was no longer snoring. Evelyn replaced the bowl, the jar, and the flask, and put the sewing kit back in the dresser. She got under the blankets and lay there a while with her eyes open, staring at the ceiling, then at one of her hands, blue with reflected moonlight. The scent of him was still on her, she thought. Something else besides dirt and sweat.

“Where’ve you been,” said Lily.

Evelyn swallowed. “Little girl’s room. This bladder of mine. Can’t hold more than a thimble these days.”

Lily rolled over and breathed heavily through her nose. Perhaps tired. Perhaps annoyed at the interruption. Perhaps disappointed in her sister’s talents as a liar.