Hannah rocked back on the balls of her feet as she reached the bottom step. The hallway ahead was dark and cold, but she could see reflections from the kitchen fire flickering against the far wall – the American soldiers in silhouette, thrown to twice their ordinary size, shoulders and arms warping and weaving back and forth in shadow. Even if she hadn’t been able to see them, she would have known they were there by the sounds: plates clattering, glasses (her mother’s good glasses, the ones she’d had at her wedding) being crashed together, and raucous, tuneless voices lifted in song. “A landlady of France, she loved an officer, ’tis said, and this officer he dearly loved her brandy-oh.” The sort of song her mother would say was unfit for small ears, Hannah was quite sure. She was equally sure that, in spite of her having passed her eleventh birthday last month, Mother would still say her ears were too small for soldiers’ songs.
Hannah wiggled her toes in her stockings, trying to stave off the creeping cold. Mother would be very angry with her if she knew she’d come downstairs; her instructions had been both explicit and stern when she’d put Hannah and her siblings in the attic room. “Don’t come down for anything,” she’d said, “and don’t open that door to anyone, no matter what you hear. I’ll come back when I can.” And Hannah had meant to obey, she truly had. But she hadn’t reckoned for Sophy getting sick, and she didn’t think Mother had either. She had left Hannah in charge of the little ones; surely she couldn’t blame her for doing what must be done to keep them safe. And she didn’t know what to do to help Sophy, but she did know that her sister’s fever was climbing with each moment that passed, and if she didn’t do something soon, Sophy might die.
The hall floorboards creaked when she stepped onto them, but the soldiers were making too much noise to notice. They’d moved onto another song, “Oh, dirty Maggie Mae they have taken her away, and she’ll never walk down Lime Street anymore.” Hannah could well imagine the look on Mother’s face. She edged along the dark hallway, keeping one hand against the wall, for the familiar surroundings had somehow taken on a sinister cast in the dark. She had been afraid of the dark once, when she was small; but Father had picked her up early one morning when she hadn’t wanted to come down to breakfast, and carried her through the house to show her there was nothing to be frightened of. Back then, it had only been Hannah, Mother, Father, and her brother and sister in the house; now Father was gone, and in his place sat a half-dozen Americans. His reassurances had calmed her once upon a time, but that time had passed and their house was not safe anymore.
Her courage nearly failed her when she reached the kitchen doorway; she had to wrap her fingers around the doorjamb to keep herself from turning tail and fleeing. When she peered around the corner, she saw that the glow from the fire had lit up the Americans all yellow and red, in spite of the blue-grey of their coats. Their ruddy faces were all shadowed at the bottom with stubble, and many had remnants of the soup Mother had served for supper clinging to their mustaches and beards. The one sitting closest to the door – the leader, Hannah remembered, he had been at the head of the group when they came knocking on the door – had one arm resting on the table, and the other – Hannah bit the inside of her cheek. His other arm, his right one, was curled around her mother’s waist, his hand resting casually on her hip. The spot Mother was standing in meant her face was cast in shadow, but Hannah could still make out the hard set of her mouth, the deep lines around her eyes. The leader was sitting in Father’s chair. Hannah had a brief but satisfying vision of kicking the chair legs out from under him. In her vision, she was bigger and braver than she knew herself to be in truth.
None of them noticed her standing there, not even Mother. It wasn’t until one of the soldiers heaved himself up from his chair at the far end of the table and announced, “I’m going for a piss,” that anyone turned towards the door. He took a half-step towards her, then stopped, his face creasing in soggy confusion. “What’s this then?”
His words drew the leader’s attention, and clever Mother took advantage of his distraction to slide out of his grip. Then her eyes fell on Hannah, and her mouth went white. “Hannah!” she snapped. “I told you to stay with the children!”
“I did. But –“ Hannah took a single, shaking step into the room. All eyes were on her now, the soldiers amused and her mother furious. “But Sophy’s awful sick, and she was asking for you.”
Mother’s expression was blank, but Hannah knew her mother – knew the look in her eyes. It was the same look she’d had the day Father had marched away with the militia, and then later, when the letter came to tell them he wouldn’t be returning. Fear and grief and resignation all at once. “Put her to bed, then,” she said, “and I’ll be up when I can.”
“I did that.” Hannah shuffled forward another half-step. “But she’s feverish and raving, and she can’t keep anything down, and she’s all over in little red spots.” She licked her lips. “I think it may be scarlatina.”
That last was only a partial truth. Hannah had heard stories of scarlatina – two of Father’s sisters had died of it when they were small – but she had never seen it in person. She knew, though, that everyone feared it. If the Americans thought there was scarlatina in the house, perhaps they would leave them alone and go force themselves on someone else’s family. Perhaps it was wicked of her to wish that on anyone, but she found she didn’t much care. All she wanted was for her house to be her house again.
Mother’s nostrils flared, but she had smoothed her expression to blankness by the time she turned back to the leader. “Captain Farnham,” she said, her voice sweet and low, “you heard for yourself – my youngest is taken ill. It would be best for you and your men to take yourselves off – you surely don’t wish to fall victim to it yourself, not when you must go on the march again soon. The Dixon farm is just up the road, and I’m certain you would be more comfortable there.”
Captain Farnham boomed with laughter. It was a laugh that filled the room and pressed in on Hannah’s ears until they popped. “No great friend to your neighbours, are you Mrs. Taggart?” he said. He looked around at his men, who were watching the conversation unfold with only mild interest. “We’ve grown comfortable enough here, and the little one is a floor away from us. We’ll stay where we are.” He bent his head down towards her; for an awful moment, Hannah thought he meant to kiss her. “But you’re worried for the child, of course. Go up and see to her, if you wish.”
Mother dropped her gaze. “As you say,” she murmured, and edged along the wall, towards Hannah. Her hand closed tight around Hannah’s forearm when she reached her, and she steered her away from the kitchen doorway and out into the hall. Behind them, one of the soldiers hooted, “hurry back!” and the others cheered before breaking into song again.
Neither of them spoke a word until they were halfway up the stairs. Mother bent down towards Hannah, the whites of her eyes shining in the dark. “Is she really ill?” she whispered.
“Yes,” Hannah whispered back, even though the soldiers surely couldn’t hear them over the din they were making. “She was fussing this morning, and she wouldn’t eat her breakfast, but I thought it was only wilfulness – but then she had a bit of dinner and threw it all up, and she hasn’t been talking sense since sundown.” She felt tears on her cheeks and was glad Mother couldn’t see them in the dark. “I put a wet rag on her forehead to bring the fever down, but it didn’t work, and her skin – it’s all bumpy –”
“Enough,” Mother said, and half-dragged her the rest of the way up the stairs. Hannah had shut the attic door behind her when she left, after making her brother promise to lock it behind her. Mother raised her fist and rapped on the wood. “Benjamin, let us in.”
There was the scraping sound of the bolt being lifted, and then the door was open, and Benjamin stood, wide-eyed, on the threshold. “She’s no better,” he said. “I tried to put her by the fire, but she was too heavy to carry, and she kicked and cried when I tried to drag her.”
Mother passed him without a word, leaving Hannah trailing in her wake. Hannah and Benjamin followed at her heels to where Sophy was lying near the centre of the room, where Benjamin had managed to drag her. She was thrashing against the cocoon of blankets Hannah had wrapped her in, her head bumping against the floor with every twitch. “Hold her still,” Mother said, and went to the fireplace, where she bent to light a candle from the embers. Hannah crouched down and took her sister’s head between her hands. It was hard to hold on to; sweat had made her slippery, and in her delirium, she did not want to be held. Her skin was rough under Hannah’s hands, not soft like it had been when they had gone to sleep the night before, or when they’d last washed together, or even when she had been a baby freshly born, and Mother had let Hannah touch the top of her head. Now she was covered in little bumps, and they felt somehow coarse, prickly. Like rubbing a flour sack between her fingers.
Mother bent down over Sophy, her lips pursed. Hannah didn’t move, barely even breathed. She’d thought Sophy might be calm if Mother came, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. She was still whimpering intermittently, her breath coming in harsh pants, her tongue – darker than it ought to be, bluish-purple instead of pink – lolling out of the side of her mouth. “Hush now,” Mother said, smoothing wet strands of hair back from her forehead. In the dark, Hannah couldn’t read the meaning behind her expression. All she could do was watch as Mother gave Sophy’s forehead another pat, then stood.
“Keep her warm and quiet,” she said. “Give her water, if she’ll keep it down. Nothing more to be done than that.”
“But she’s dying!” Benjamin burst out. Hannah clenched her hands together behind her back. She knew better than to speak, but Benjamin was still too small to restrain himself. “She’s dying and she needs medicine and a doctor and Father –”
Mother slapped him. It wasn’t a hard blow – only a warning. Hannah could have warned him, too, if she’d known what he was going to say. “Don’t fuss,” Mother said in a low voice, “and do as I tell you.” She moved towards the door, the candlelight casting a spindly shadow behind her. She paused with one hand on the latch. “And keep her away from the window,” she said, before lifting the latch and being swallowed by the darkness of the staircase beyond.
The slap couldn’t have hurt too terribly, but Benjamin was whimpering anyway. Hannah didn’t – couldn’t – care. “How could you?” she said. She was still kneeling by Sophy’s head. “You know Father can’t come.”
It had been two months since Queenston Heights, three weeks since the news had arrived. Benjamin and Sophy had wailed when Mother had told them. Hannah had not. She knew what was expected of her now; they had no man of the house, with Father gone and Benjamin only seven years old, so she had to help her mother. Tears wouldn’t help. It didn’t matter if she wanted to or not. What mattered was surviving. And they had been – at least until the night before, when the Americans had arrived on their doorstep.
Sophy let out a long, low groan – or no, not a groan, not really. The sound grated in her throat like a knife against a whetstone. It was too big a sound for a little girl’s mouth. Hannah tried to take Sophy’s head between her hands again, but her sister’s thrashing was too strong. She rolled to the side, out of her blankets, each limb bent at a weird angle and spasming. She looked as if she was having a fit. Hannah leapt to her feet, but before she could run to Sophy, her sister rose up on all fours. Her head rolled on her neck with a sickening crack; if she wasn’t still upright, Hannah would have thought she’d broken her neck.
Benjamin let out a sharp cry. “Her skin!”
The room was still shadowed, but when Hannah took a tentative step forward, she could see what her brother meant: each of the tiny pustules on Sophy’s skin had developed a dark spot in the centre, seeping dark blood. As she watched, the dark spots extended and flexed, like weeds spouting from cracks in dry earth. Sophy made the awful grating noise again, her back bent in a high arch. Her fingers were bent into claws against the floor, and when she moved, the wood screeched. Little bits of sawdust flew into the air. Sophy reared back, arms windmilling – Benjamin cried out again – and when she landed on her back, her face was twisted beyond recognition, mouth and chin elongated, teeth jutting out over her bottom lip. For a moment, Hannah thought her skin was changing shades – but no, it was the growths, dark spots spreading and extending until they covered her features entirely. She let out another sound, this one higher in pitch, and rolled over so that she was braced on all fours, her back arched high. Hannah grabbed Benjamin and dragged him backwards. Her eyes were still fixed on Sophy’s hands, which were not hands anymore – her fingers had narrowed and sharpened, each one tipped with a deadly point. If Sophy lashed out at either of them, Hannah knew, she could easily slice them to ribbons.
Sophy – or the thing that had been Sophy – stood now in the middle of the room, body heaving with great, panting breaths. Her tongue, still bluish-purple, lolled out like a dog’s. At first glance, Hannah might have mistaken her for a dog – but closer examination would put paid to that impression almost immediately. Her back was humped, her snout elongated, and a great ruff of blue-black fur stood out around her neck like a mane. She was on all fours, but she hardly looked it; her front legs (arms? Were they still arms?) were longer than her back ones by several degrees, so that she looked more like a crouching, hairy giant than a dog. She swung her head from side to side, her eyes – bright blue as they’d always been, but not Sophy’s eyes, not now – landing on Hannah. Hannah chewed furiously on her bottom lip, swallowing a whimper.
Her sister whined and snuffled, taking several tottering steps towards Hannah and Benjamin. Hannah pushed Benjamin behind her with shaking hands. He was wailing in wordless terror, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the Sophy-thing that went on staring right back at her. Was Sophy still in there? She hadn’t leapt to attack them; perhaps that meant she still knew Hannah somehow, even though all aspects of the little girl she was had been absorbed into the creature that stood there now. She let out another long, high whine, and swung towards the door. She lifted an arm and raked a paw – because it was a paw then, not a hand, not anymore – across the wood, sending wood chips flying in every direction. Hannah put her hands over her ears. Sophy clawed at the door again, but could manage no more than making gouges in the wood. She huffed in frustration – and tears sprang to Hannah’s eyes when she did, because she had heard that sound before, when her sister was thwarted and meant to throw a fit to get her way – and lurched in a circle, making for the spot where Hannah and Benjamin stood. Hannah didn’t hesitate. She threw Benjamin to the floor, landing on top of him as she buried her face in her arms and waited for her sister to pounce.
But she didn’t. Hannah heard Sophy back up several steps, then start to run. Keep her away from the window, she remembered Mother saying, just a second too late – not that she would have been able to do anything about it – and then Sophy crouched down and leapt through the air with far more grace than Hannah could have anticipated. She crashed through the window with her full weight, splintering the shutters in a single blow and flinging herself through the open space beyond. She let out a cry as she fell, and Hannah cried out as well, leaping to her feet. The cold winter wind was blowing through the open window, and Sophy was gone.
Still lying on the floor, Benjamin lifted his head. “Where did she go?”
From below, there was another resounding crash. Hannah dashed to the door and flung the bolt, taking the stairs beyond two at a time until she was in the front hall. There was no time to be afraid of the dark now. Her feet pounded against the floorboards as she ran for the kitchen, where she could hear the Americans – but they weren’t singing any more. They were screaming.
Hannah stopped in the doorway, bracing herself against the wall, as quiet and beneath notice as she could be. The room in front of her was chaos – the table overturned, smashed crockery scattered across the floor, and the men all howling in fear, anger, and pain. The Sophy-beast ricocheted against the walls, fairly flinging herself from one end of the room to the other in her quest to get at as many soldiers as she could. Three already lay on the ruins of the table, unseeing eyes staring at the ceiling, their fronts each a mess of gore. One of them had been ripped so far open, his guts lay in a puddle beside him; one end of them almost touched Hannah’s foot. A fourth soldier was backed into a corner, bayonet brandished in front of him, trying to fend Sophy off. It did him no good. Sophy smacked it aside with a single sweep of her paw, then swung the paw again and tore his throat out in one blow. He didn’t have time to scream, but he did gurgle as he fell.
Two soldiers remained, both on the far side of the room from where Sophy stood. One of them, Hannah had taken no notice of before, and so didn’t know his name. The other was Captain Farnham. “Go!” the captain shouted, and his surviving companion hardly needed telling twice. They both bolted, running so close by Hannah that she could feel the air they stirred as they went by. Neither one took any notice of her. Across the room, Sophy wheeled around, eyes narrowing. She lifted up one paw, pointing – Hannah thought suddenly of Mr. Dixon down the road, and the hound dog he kept for hunting – and leapt over the ruins of the kitchen, barreling through the door after her prey. Hannah heard a crash in the hall behind her, and realized that either Sophy or the soldiers must have broken the door down.
It was only then that she realized Mother had been in the room all that while, pressed into the corner diagonal from where Hannah stood. Sophy, it seemed, had taken no notice of her. She emerged now, blue eyes blazing. There was a streak of blood across her face, bright red in the candlelight. She glared at Hannah, who shrank against the wall.
“Stay put,” was all she said, before she pushed past Hannah through the door and after Sophy. Hannah didn’t think twice. She took to her heels, running out the door and down the hall, avoiding the front entrance – she’d been right, it was in pieces – and darting out the back door instead.
The farmhouse backed onto the woods, and though the full moon and bare branches made it slightly easier for Hannah to see where she was going, the trees were still dense and dark. After a half-dozen paces, she couldn’t even see her breath frosting in the air before her. But she didn’t need to see, not really – all she needed was to follow the crashing sounds of the soldiers trying and failing to make their way through the bush. Hannah and her siblings had played in these woods often enough that she knew how to make it through the undergrowth without snagging on low-hanging branches. There were tracks they had stomped through the woods, places Hannah had gone out with Father to tap the trees for maple sugar, and little hollows where she had curled up during games of hide-and-seek while Benjamin and Sophy had hunted for her. The Americans didn’t know any of that. They didn’t know her family, or her home; they didn’t know her sister.
She hadn’t thought to put boots or a cloak on in her headlong flight out of the house, but she hardly felt the cold as she moved through the woods. She was too intent on following Sophy’s trail. Occasionally, she would come across a spot where the moonlight broke through the trees, and when it did, she could see bright splashes of blood across the snow. The Americans’ blood, or Sophy’s? Sophy hadn’t seemed injured, but it had all happened so fast; and the Americans had guns.
Almost as soon as the thought had crossed her mind, she heard the nearby pop of rifle fire, followed by a howl. Her breath caught in her throat, and she began to run faster, shoving branches out of her way as she went. There were two more pops in quick succession, then a scream. Hannah couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. Her calves burned and her lungs ached, and the cold was beginning to penetrate her consciousness as she moved deeper into the forest. Just as she thought she would collapse if she had to run any farther, she came to a break in the undergrowth, and nearly fell forward into the clearing.
The Sophy-beast was standing up on her hind legs, long face twisted in a snarl, weaving back and forth as if she were drunk. One of the Americans lay on the ground, torn open like the ones back at the house, his exposed bowels steaming in the freezing air. Captain Farnham stood with his back to a tree, his rifle held aloft with two trembling hands. He was pointing it at Sophy. His eyes were half-wild with terror, the front of his uniform soaked with blood and urine, his right sleeve torn clean through to show the dirty white of his shirt underneath.
“God damn you!” he shouted. His voice was hoarse. “God damn you!” Even at a distance, Hannah saw his finger move on the trigger, and she made to leap forward – but the sharp crack of the rifle stopped her in her tracks.
“No!” As she watched, Sophy tottered on her hind legs, stumbling backwards. Hannah took a step forward, thinking, absurdly, that she could catch her. Against the tree, Captain Farnham’s eyes went wide. His grip went slack on the rifle, which fell to the snow at his feet. He swayed for a moment, blinking stupidly. Then his knees buckled, and he fell forward, landing facedown. On his back, Hannah saw a dark spot begin to spread across the fabric of his coat.
Sophy whined, curling in on herself until she lay in a ball on the ground. Now that she was no longer in Hannah’s field of vision, she could see beyond, to the other side of the clearing. Her mother stood there, her head uncovered and her sleeves rolled up. She was holding Father’s hunting rifle. The barrel still smoked.
Hannah watched, mouth open, as Mother crossed the clearing to where Sophy lay. In the moments since Hannah had looked away, she had shrunk, hair disappearing and mouth receding to its natural shape. She now lay naked in the snow, looking for all the world like the little girl she had been – the one Hannah had known. Her knuckles, already turning blue, were pressed against her mouth, which was –
Hannah’s stomach turned over. Sophy’s mouth was still smeared with blood.
It didn’t seem to bother Mother, who bent down over Sophy, putting the back of one hand against her forehead like she was checking for fever. “Poor lamb,” she murmured. “It’s all right. Rest now.” And then, so quietly that Hannah could barely hear it: “I didn’t think it would be you.”
Mother crouched, taking Sophy into her arms and tucking her against her chest. Sophy, still unconscious, whimpered, turning her face to Mother’s neck. Mother straightened, the moonlight casting the lines on her face into sharp relief. It struck Hannah then, how many of those lines had appeared over the past month; how much older she looked now than she had in September. If Father hadn’t died, had come back home instead, would he have recognized her?
“Hannah.”
Hannah froze. Mother sighed. “Hannah, you can come out now.”
Shaking, Hannah stepped out from the shadows into the clearing proper. She half-expected Mother to shout; after all, this was the second time that night that Hannah had disobeyed her. But all she did was extend her free arm, beckoning Hannah over. Hannah went, burying her face in her mother’s side, and Mother let her stay there for several moments before pushing gently at her shoulder. “Come along,” she said. “We must get the little ones to bed, and the kitchen cleaned. No time to waste.”
And for all of Hannah’s thoughts about how different Mother looked, the sight of her holding that rifle, the gleam in her bright blue eyes as she’d watched Sophy in the kitchen – in that moment, she sounded just like the Mother Hannah had always known. And so Hannah did as she had always done where her mother was concerned. She let Mother take her hand in hers and lead her through the woods, back towards the light that burned in the farmhouse window – back towards home.
####
Sophy slept for three days. By the second day, Hannah had begun to suspect that she had died – but when she held her hand over Sophy’s mouth, she could feel her sister’s breath moist against her palm. She gave no sign of what had happened, and bore no injuries. There weren’t even spots on her face where the fur had grown. She looked like a little girl; she looked, as Father had said when she was a baby, “like a little angel.”
The house was quiet. Benjamin cowered in a far corner of the attic and refused to go near Sophy. Mother said nothing. She’d called Hannah downstairs to clean up the ruins of the kitchen – Hannah, wrist-deep in gore, had struggled to keep her breakfast down – then sent her back upstairs and told her to stay there. She left their meals outside the door twice a day, and didn’t speak to them otherwise. Hannah choked down corn mush and wondered what Mother was barring the door against – was she afraid of what would happen to them, or to her? Who did she think Sophy would hurt when she woke?
But on the third day, when Sophy did wake, she didn’t hurt anyone. She blinked big, cloudy blue eyes up at Hannah, reached up one hand, and said, “I want Papa.”
Benjamin cried in the corner. Downstairs, Mother clanged pots and pans together. Hannah looked at her sister and said, “Papa’s not here.”
There was more crying after that – from Sophy and from Benjamin. Not from Hannah. Hannah had no tears to shed. She thought of her mother that night in the woods, pale and cold and resolute. She thought of her father marching off to war. She thought, Father isn’t here and Mother won’t protect us and it has to be me, because there isn’t anyone else.
The house stayed quiet. They kept to their separate floors until Sophy and Benjamin – who had started to approach Sophy again, like a kicked dog crawling back to its master – grew restless, and Hannah took them outside. They ran around and muddied their clothes and climbed the trees as though nothing had happened – as though they were still the children they had been before the soldiers, before Queenston, before the invasion. Perhaps they still were. Perhaps Sophy’s change had been only skin deep, and only Hannah’s soul had been altered.
When Hannah looked over her shoulder, she saw Mother standing in the doorway. She went to her. She said nothing, but leaned against her mother’s side the way she had when she was small. Mother would not – could not – protect her; she knew that. But was it so dreadful to pretend? To dream awhile of being small and safe, cradled in her mother’s arms?
One of Mother’s hands came down and stroked Hannah’s hair. “Good girl,” she said, so softly Hannah almost didn’t hear it. She said nothing further, and Hannah didn’t speak at all, just watched the light play through the tree leaves, dappling her brother and sister’s faces so that they looked like something not of this world.
