Amina sighs. “No one knows why he takes the girls he does. Did the other families do something to cause their daughters to be chosen? Is it their fault?” She stares at me in such a way that I can’t help thinking of Mother. Those are her eyes, her peering-into-my-soul stare. “No one knows, Verena. Do not presume to understand a madman.”
Mutely, I nod. I believe her. For the first time since Karis was taken, I believe that I may not carry the full burden of her death. I do not return to school, but sometimes, I sit in the darkened house with a candle at night, and I read.
When Amina starts sharing the chores, I do not send her off to her bed with a stern word, and when she slips into the sitting room and asks to read the book I have just finished, I hand it to her. Together, we are not as whole as we had been with Karis, or with Bastian and Mother, but we are healing. Like the other families who have lost their daughters, we are moving on—guiltily grateful that come Autumn we will not be among the families worrying that one of us is next. The Maiden Thief has never taken two daughters from the same family. That, at least, gives me a horrible comfort.
***
By the time Autumn finally comes, I realize that Father no longer watches Amina in the garden. He even smiles at me once. It is not much, but there is a lightness in our home that comes from knowing that we will be spared. No one speaks it aloud, but Karis’ loss has spared us from the pall that hangs over every other family with a daughter in Charlestown.
Amina has even been talking to a man. He is closer to Father’s age than to mine, but Father doesn’t know about Jakob. He stopped by the garden for a rest one afternoon at the start of summer.
Not long after she tells me of him, I hide and study the man who has drawn smiles from my sister. He is older, but still handsome, dark of eye and hair, light of skin and spirit. He travels for his work, passing through small towns like ours. He does not speak of his work, telling Amina only that it is not a woman’s place to worry over such things. It may be unwomanly of me, but I wonder all the same. Jakob dresses in rags, but it doesn’t take me many afternoons of secret observation to realize that these ragged clothes are a ploy to make her feel comfortable. His nails are short and clean, and he has the scent of herbs about him. I think he might be a doctor; I know he is a man of learning. His words when he speaks reveal more education than the simple clothes he wears. If we weren’t fallen so low, he would be exactly the sort of man Father would’ve selected as a groom.
Jakob is not meant to be mine. No groom is. All that can be mine is the penance for causing the Maiden Thief to steal my sister. Amina deserves happiness. She has lost too many siblings, and she’s paid for others’ mistakes with too many years of work.
“He’s so kind,” Amina says one evening after Jakob has left. Her voice is filled with a softness I’ve not heard for years. Even at barely seventeen, I hear it.
“Do you think he’s going to offer for you?”
She looks down at her ragged nails. Every night lately, she scrubs to get as much dirt from her hands as she can. It isn’t enough to remove the years of ground-in earth. “I couldn’t leave home. I’ve told him as much. I don’t even go into town. How would I leave?”
“With only Father and I, we don’t need much,” I point out. “I could grow enough to earn the little we need to pay the bills and add meat to our meals sometimes.”
Amina meets my eyes. “Maybe.”
A new part of me is burning with jealousy, not of Jakob but of what he can give her. If Amina leaves, if she finds freedom, I will never be able to do so. In truth, I may not have that option anyhow. Father needs someone to mind the house, to cook his meals, to suffer for the loss of almost everyone he’s loved. He has become colder and crueler every year. Gone is the man who would heft me onto his shoulders when I was a small girl. Gone is the man who brought me a rose when he returned from his business trips. The man left in his place has a stone where his heart once resided.
I want my sister to find happiness, to have cause to laugh and smile, to not spend her years toiling for Father and me. I shove my envy down so far that it hurts to breath, and I assure my sister, “He’d be a fool not to want to marry you, and you’d be a fool not to take his offer when it comes.”
***
Those words haunt me when the leaves begin to turn and fall. Jakob has always been cautious to avoid Father’s eyes, and his visits tend to coincide with when I am not at the window. I watch them surreptitiously sometimes, but I until now I have avoided meeting the man who will probably marry my sister.
I know Amina slipped out to meet Jakob, but I feigned sleep as I do often. It’s been a full year since Karis was taken, but the nightmares of her abduction and presumed murder weigh heavy enough that sleep is often hard to find. A cry outside startles me, and I am out the door with only my nightdress on. My knee-length hair hangs mostly free of its confining braid, proof of my restless thrashing, and my feet are bare despite the Autumn chill.
“Meeny!” I call out as I run into the yard, indecently clad in only my white nightgown.
I stop suddenly, my eyes widen as I take in the unexpected scene before me. My sister, her bright hair glowing in the light of the nearly full moon, is caught up in Jakob’s arms. He has a hand splayed across her back, and her nightdress is pushed up to her hips. Her legs are bare, quite indecently so, and as I stare at her I see that her body is pressed tightly to his. Her back is to me, and for that I’m grateful.
My hand flies to my mouth as Karis’ always did when she was in shock. I bite down on my own skin to keep my sounds of surprise hidden.
I start to turn to creep away, feeling foolish for mistaking her cry for pain, but before I can escape, I realize that Jakob sees me.
He sees me standing there as he makes love to my sister.
I would apologize if the words could be kept from Amina.
I would run if it could erase the embarrassment of this moment.
Instead I stand still, unable to move as Jakob meets my eyes and smiles. Moments drag by as I study his smile, unsure of what to do. Then, he closes his eyes, releasing me from his stare.
I run.
Later, when Amina stealthily returns to the house, I pretend to sleep.
The next morning, I wait for her to tell me her good news, prepared to feign surprise at her pending nuptials.
The following day, I wait again.
By the week’s end, I am forced to ask, “Where is Jakob?”
Amina offers me a weak smile and says, “He had to travel for business. He’ll return next month.”
And it is then that I understand that what I saw was a goodbye. I hug my sister. “It’s only a single month,” I tease. “Father was often gone that long.”
She nods and holds me tighter. “Maybe if he returns, you could come with us. He says . . . he says he loves me, Verena.” She smiles then. “He says he’ll take me away to a castle where I’ll be his perfect wife. He told me that he’ll cherish me, and I’ll live like a queen as long as I’m faithful and good!”
“You deserve it,” I tell her.
And I mean it.
Yet, that night, when I sleep, it is not Karis I dream of. In my sleeping mind, I see Jakob smiling at me as he had held Amina. I wake, and I hate him for giving my sister the life that Karis and I will never have. I lie awake, and I hate myself for envying my sister.
***
Only three weeks later, Amina is gone. I will never see that castle. She has vanished, and I am left alone with Father.
“What did you do?” he roars at me. His words are followed with a fist.
I shake, staring up at him, afraid to stand. “Nothing.”
“She’s gone. You did this. They are all dead because of you.”
When I open my mouth to tell him that it was not the killer who took Amina, he puts his weight on his good leg, and then he hits me over and over with his cane.
I decide then and there not to ease his pain. I am bruised and bleeding, and the man who was m
y father is nowhere to be found in this shell before me.
“Better her fate than be here with you,” I tell him as I crawl out of his reach.
He stares at me, chest heaving with the exertion of beating me, and for a flicker of a moment, I see the man I once knew. Then he says, “Get up. The blood will stain the floor if you let it stand.”
And I am left alone to clean my blood from my father’s floor.
***
I envy Amina intensely enough that I sometimes hate her for leaving me here. The townsfolk look at me with equal parts fear and pity when I go to sell the vegetables these next weeks. I want to tell them the truth, that the Maiden Thief has not yet taken this year’s girl, but they all turn their backs on me or look away quickly the few times I open my mouth to speak.
They will know when this year’s girl is taken.
But days pass, and no girl vanishes. It worries me. Maybe the Maiden Thief has stopped. Maybe he visited another town this year. I wish Amina had told me where the castle was. I would feel better if I could speak to her.
Weeks pass, and one day, I am picking apples when Jakob stops at the orchard.
“Did she come too?” I look past him, expecting to see my sister, wondering why he still wears such ragged things when he’s already taken Amina to his castle. There is no need to feign poverty now.
Jakob stares at me. “Who?”
“My sister.”
“Amina?” he asks.
I try to recall if he would have met Karis, but she was dead by the time he started visiting Amina. Something about the way he watches me sets fear racing through my body. “She left with you, didn’t she?”
“Why would you think that?” He folds his arms and studies me.
“But Amina . . .”
“I was looking for something, and I thought I’d finally found it. I was wrong again.” He gives me a sweet sad smile. “I came back. I’ll have to try again.”
“She’s not with you?”
“No.”
If not for his arms coming around me, I would have tumbled to the dirt. I am limp in his grasp, upright only because he holds me so. My sister is dead. I’ve envied her for escaping this wretched drudgery, this poverty, this life.
She did not escape.
She was stolen.
Like my eldest sister.
Like the other girls before her.
“She’s dead,” I tell Jakob in a voice made weak with the tears I cannot stop. “I thought she went with you, that you married her, but if she’s not with you . . . she’s dead. My sister is dead.”
Jakob cradles my head and holds me to him.
“It’s my fault,” I say between sobs. “Both Karis and Amina were taken. It’s my fault. I should never have asked the townspeople to catch the Maiden Thief.”
He looks down at me and asks, “Will you make it up to me?”
For a thick moment, anger that he’d ask anything of me makes me want to strike him. I have lost two sisters. I have lost any chance of happiness. But then the weight of my own culpability squashes fear and anger. I caused this. I did not steal their lives, but I drew the madman’s eye to them. I owe penance. Again.
“I will,” I promise Jakob.
I’ve stepped into my siblings’ duties so often that is has become like donning a nearly-fitting coat. Perhaps this time it will be for the best. Jakob loved my sister, and she is gone from him. I can replace her, as I have for my father when Bastian died and when Karis died.
“You will love me as she should have,” Jakob murmurs.
I’m not sure if it’s a question or an order, but I swear, “I will. I promise I will.”
***
Months pass, and Jakob visits me in secret as he once visited my sister. He wears nicer clothes now.
“You’ve known all along that I was not poor,” he says one evening. “Yet you said nothing.”
I nod.
And he rewards me with a kiss.
Since that day, I feel like he is often testing me, trying to see what I think, checking to see what I observe of him and the world around us. He makes me feel things I hate sometimes, prodding me until I share my ugliness with him. He rewards me with kisses or kind words when I do as he wants.
“Be truthful, Verena. I want to know what you really think.”
“I almost hated my sister for the way you spoke to her,” I admit.
“Your sister had a kind heart,” he says. Then he brushes his lips over mine. “But she was not as brave as you, or as smart as you.”
There is little I crave more than affection these days, and Jakob gives it to me without asking much in return. He asks for confessions of my sins, my flaws, my weaknesses. He asks that I tell no lies and that I swear not to talk to any other man. It is a small fee for the riches he gives me; his praise and his small kisses are treasures I’ve coveted. Now, they are mine. They will always be mine.
“Amina said once that you’d been studying the Maiden Thief,” Jakob remarks.
“And now my sisters are dead,” I murmur in shame. “It is my fault. I told you the night you came back.”
Jakob tilts my head back, but he does not reward me this time. Instead, he tells me, “I’m sure it is. They suffered because of you. They knew it. You know it. I know it.” He sighs. “I suffered because of you, Verena.”
My heart seems to die. I want absolution, not this. The love that I’ve been kindling for him flickers.
“You have much to atone for,” Jakob whispers. “You know that, don’t you?”
“I do.” I try to look down, but he won’t let me. I think about my family, broken, dead, and lost because of me. I think of Jakob, who lost my sister because of me. There is no way I can set things right in this world.
“You should be grateful I forgive you,” Jakob says then.
“I am.”
He kisses me finally, but all I taste is bitterness. I will work harder to atone. I will show him that I have choked down ashes and brine.
***
By the summer, I am ready to ask Jakob if he will have me or not. I know it is not a woman’s role to ask, but I’ve decided that I am ready to prove that I can love him, to prove that I can give him the happiness I’ve ruined.
“I know that I can never replace Amina, but”—my voice breaks as I try to find the courage to make my offer—“I could try to make you happy.”
My embarrassment makes it hard to meet his eyes, but I do it. I want him to understand that I know what I’m doing. I will be eighteen this Autumn, old enough to be a wife.
“I’m yours if you want me,” I manage to say.
“Did you think about what you saw that night, Verena?” His voice is rough, and I startle thinking that he’s angry. “You watched us.”
“I thought she was in danger,” I try to explain. “I heard her cry out. I didn’t know she was . . . with you when I came outside.”
“I’ve thought about it,” he continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “You watching me.”
“Oh.” I know he saw me. I remember the smile that had seemed so cold in the moonlight.
“Are you pure?” he asks.
“I am,” I assure him.
He holds tight to me, his hands clutching both of my arms, and says, “Never lie to me, Verena.”
“I’m not. I swear it, Jakob. I am pure. I’ve never even been kissed by anyone else.”
He says nothing, but that night, when I slip out of doors to meet him, he takes me into the darkest part of the orchard. I hold his hand, following him silently. We stop in a small clearing between trees. When I was small, I played here with my brother. Father had chopped down several sick trees, leaving behind tiny stumps that barely showed after all these years. Now, I come here with my . . . Jakob.
Cautiously, I ask, “What are we now?”
“You are my wife now, Verena.”
“After we see the minister,” I start to correct him.
“Now. You are my wife now.” He releases my hand and stare
s at me. “Will you be good and faithful?”
“I will.”
“And I will keep you with me always. I will never ask you to work as your father has done,” he vows.
Then he kisses me. It is not the soft kisses he has brushed over my lips before. I can’t breathe for fear, and when he pulls away, I am shaking.
There is something about him that is strange and hard now. I have done no new wrong, but I am afraid. The glimpses I’ve had of the darkness in Jakob are nothing compared to what I see now.
“No one else can see what is mine,” he murmurs as he starts to pull my nightdress up as he once did with my dead sister. His voice is low, as if he’s not speaking to me at all but simply speaking his own thoughts. “Once we are home, you will be bare before me, but I have to keep you covered here.” He pauses his actions and grips my hips bruise-hard. “You must be faithful, Wife. No one can see what is mine.”
Then he unfastens his trousers.
Fear makes me bold, and I try to pull away. “Jakob, wait!”
“We are married now,” he tells me. “Our vows were said.”
I’ve never heard of such a wedding. There was no minister, no guests, no family, but I’m not sure such a thing is still an option for me. The townspeople do not look my way. My family, save Father, is dead.
“You said you would try to replace her,” Jakob reminds me.
I lift my worn cotton nightdress the rest of the way, baring my body to him, and Jakob kisses me once more. Then he watches my face as he presses his body into mine. I bite my lip to keep my screams silent, but my eyes fill with tears.
Jakob smiles as he did the night I saw him with my sister. I admit that it is a cruel smile. I admit that there is reason to fear the man who calls himself my husband now. I let my cries of pain free, and his smile grows wider.
After he is done with my body and refastens his trousers, he kisses my tears away and tells me, “You are a good girl, Verena. You did not lie to me.”
And then he touches my body gently, kissing and licking my tears away. His mouth moves to my throat and my chest, even though the flesh is still covered with my nightgown.