The Swan and the Jackal

Chapter Seventeen

Cassia

Fredrik carefully raises his warm body from mine and sits upright with his back against the wall. His legs are moved apart, arms propped on the tops of his bent knees. He tilts his head back. His beautiful, stubbly face appears crestfallen and defeated as he gazes out at the room.

I lift up and position myself between his legs, the side of my naked body laying against his chest. I can still feel him moderately hard as his manhood presses against my lower back. I love to sit between his legs. He makes me feel safe. And I melt into him when I feel his warm, solid arms wrap around me from behind.

“My mother and father were very loving people,” I begin. “They would never hurt me. But Seraphina didn’t like them. She said they were evil and that she wanted to help me get away from them.”

I pause, attentive to Fredrik’s heartbeat thrumming through the muscles in my back. I feel the breath from his nostrils warm against the top of my shoulder as he releases a long, deep breath from his lungs.

Still, he doesn’t speak, but holds me very close to him, and I tell him what happened exactly the way I remember it.

Twenty-three years ago…

I thought the girl who moved in next door was a little strange. I never saw her around her parents. I didn’t even know there was a little girl living next door until months after they moved in. I was alone in the shed behind our house—I spent most of my time there because it was quiet—when I heard the girl singing in the backyard. I crept out of the rickety metal door, trying not to let my father know about my hiding place, and snuck around the side to peek through a slit between boards in the big wooden privacy fence that separated our backyards. She had jet black hair cut just below her shoulders. And she wore a pair of pink shorts with a whimsical rainbow printed on the left thigh—I had a pair just like them and was intrigued by that otherwise insignificant detail.

She was sitting on the grass with a stuffed animal of sorts in her lap, tucked in-between her crossed legs. Beside her was a thick coloring book. I thought that was strange, too, as we looked about the same age and I had already grown out of coloring books. She scribbled furiously across the paper with a crayon while she sang quietly to herself. She had a beautiful, melodious voice.

I pressed my face farther against the fence, trying to get a better glimpse of what she was coloring, but she was a little too far for me to make it out.

But then she sensed she was being watched and the singing stopped. Her head shot up and she just sat there for a moment, listening for sounds. I didn’t move. I couldn’t even breathe. I don’t know why I was trying so hard to remain unseen because I really wanted to talk to her. Maybe a part of me—the part that knew how dangerous she was before the rest of me did—was afraid of her.

And then she saw me. I only moved an inch because my back was starting to cramp, but that slight movement was enough to give me away.

She watched in my direction for a minute before rising to her feet and approaching me, the stuffed animal—a raggedy, dirty lamb, I noticed as she got closer—in one hand and a red crayon in the other. She left the coloring book on the grass.

“Hello,” she said, tilting her head to one side as if to see clearer through the uneven gap in the boards. “What’s your name?”

“Cassia Carrington,” I answered. “What’s yours?”

“Seraphina.” She smiled toothily.

I smiled in return. I liked her instantly.

She sat down in the leaves next to the fence and I did the same and we talked for a few minutes.

“I haven’t seen you at my school,” I said.

“Nah, I’m home-schooled.”

I watched her through the gap in the fence, only able to glimpse the dirty lamb in her lap and the tip of her index finger tracing around its little beady black eye.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“I’m ten.”

“Me too,” she said. “But my birthday is almost here, so I’ll be eleven.”

“I just had my birthday. My mom bought me a new bike.”

“That makes me older than you,” she said with an innocent air of authority in her voice that actually made me feel sheltered. “But I don’t have a bike,” she added sadly.

I never had any brothers or sisters and had always wanted one. It was hard being an only child, especially when I had no friends, either. At least not until Seraphina. And in ten minutes of talking to her, I felt like I not only finally had a friend, but that older sibling that I always wanted, too.

It took me a moment to realize there had been something sad in her voice when she said she didn’t have a bike.

“Hey, you could come over and ride mine whenever you want,” I offered.

I heard her sigh. “Thanks,” she said, paused and then added, “but my dad doesn’t like for me to go to other people’s houses.”

“Oh.” I flicked the end of a twig with my middle finger and it shot across the grass. “Well, maybe I could come to your house.”

Seraphina was quiet for an even longer moment.

“They don’t like that, either,” she finally said, “but we can still be friends.”

I wasn’t sure how that would work out seeing as how a fence separated us and she wasn’t allowed to have company or to go anywhere.

But we made it work.

Every day after I got home from school Seraphina snuck over into my shed through an opening in the fence that we made at the end of the backyard. I had used a hammer from the shed to loosen the nails on two boards so that we could slide them out of the way and easily put them back in place to make it appear that nothing had ever been moved.

Seraphina and I spent a lot of time in my shed, playing with Barbie dolls and stuffed animals. I even started coloring again and I found that I really liked it.

We were inseparable, like sisters. But as the weeks wore on, I began to see just how different we were, how different our parents were.

One afternoon, the rough voice of her father yelling her name from the back door, caused Seraphina’s whole body to shake like she had been stuffed in a freezer. She ran out of the shed as fast as she could and scrambled on her hands and knees across the dirt and leaves and rocks toward the secret opening in the fence. I guess she was afraid if she ran upright that her father would see her from the back porch.

I helped her get through the fence quickly and I closed it off after she was on the other side. Minutes later, I heard Seraphina screaming from inside her house. I sat curled up inside the shed, shaking all over hearing her blood-curdling cries rock through every bone in my body. I wet myself it scared me so bad. What sounded like a long strip of leather rang out through the air. Over and over again. And Seraphina screamed and screamed until she fell silent. But even still, I could hear the leather strap beating down on her.

I sat curled up in the corner of the shed, sobbing into my hands, tasting salt and snot and bile in the back of my throat. For a very brief but profound moment, I had hoped he’d killed her so she would never have to go through that again.

I didn’t see Seraphina for a week after that, but then one day she was sitting on the grass in the backyard again, just like she was the day I met her.

“Seraphina?” I whispered quietly through the gap in the fence.

She wouldn’t look over, but I could sense that she heard me.

“Seraphina? Are you OK?”

She barely turned her head, but even at such an angle I could see the pain in her face. She was dressed in pants and a long-sleeved shirt even though it was warm outside. I knew why. I could only wonder what the bruises looked like underneath her clothes.

We were both afraid for her to come over to my side of the fence, but we also both wanted her to. So, after a few minutes, she finally snuck to the back of the yard and I helped her crawl through the opening.

“Did he find out?” I asked once we were hidden away safely inside the shed. “About you sneaking over here?”

She shook her dark head and lowered her eyes to the little lamb in her lap. “No,” she said quietly, “he was mad because I left my clothes on my bedroom floor.”

I thought that was the most terrible thing. The stupidest thing to get in trouble for. I just sat there staring at her with my mouth agape.

Seraphina hardly ever looked me in the eyes. She sat awkwardly, as if the bones in her back and bottom hurt too badly for her to sit with comfort. And I noticed she kept pulling at the crotch of her purple pants as if the material was aggravating her skin down there. It made me feel weird. Dark. I wanted to ask why she was itching, but I was too afraid. I didn’t know why.

Seraphina raised her eyes to me.

“I have to go,” she said suddenly and pushed herself—with difficulty—to her feet, the stuffed lamb secured in the bend of her arm. “I have to get back to my project.”

“What project?” I asked with intense curiosity.

Seraphina smiled, which I thought too was odd in such a circumstance—had she already forgotten what happened to her? She offered her hand to me. I took it and she helped me to my feet.

“Just something I gotta do,” she said. “I’ll tell you about it soon.”

And then she left, sneaking back through to her side of the fence without another word.

Fredrik has never held me so tight. His arms are wrapped around me so securely that if it were any tighter I wouldn’t be able to breathe. I feel his lips on the top of my head, and his heart beating powerfully against my back.

I lift my head from his arm and turn it slightly at an angle so that I can see him. There is moisture in his eyes. I’ve never seen him this way before and it reminds me of the things he told me he went through when he was a boy.

I kiss the tops of his knuckles.

“I’m sorry…if this is bringing back bad memories,” I say. “I can stop.”

Fredrik shakes his head and wipes his eyes before the tears can fall. “No,” he says softly, “don’t apologize to me; this has nothing to do with me. Please…just tell me the story.”

I kiss his knuckles again and reluctantly continue.

Seraphina was different after that last time her father beat her, but it wasn’t thanks to me or my mother. Because I tried to help Seraphina. I sat down with my mother one night when my dad was gone at the bar and I told her about what happened.

“But momma,” I said, “he beat her so bad. I heard her screaming and it gives me nightmares.”

My mother shook her head and stuck her fork in her mouth, taking in a bite of salad. “You should stay out of it, Cassia,” she said, chewing on the leafy greens. “Don’t you tell anyone else, either. Do you hear me? If you do, you’ll be in a lot of trouble yourself.” She pointed her fork at me. “Her daddy is some big shot government guy. Very dangerous. We don’t get involved, do you understand?” She sipped down the last of her water.

I nodded nervously, and while although I couldn’t understand why my mother—who was such a loving and smart woman—wouldn’t want to call the police right away about what was happening next door, I knew too that she must’ve been afraid of Seraphina’s father for good reason. And so I did as she said and kept my mouth shut.

This went on for three years.

By the time Seraphina and I turned thirteen—her a few months before me—Seraphina was a very different girl from the one I met on the grass holding the little lamb. She still took beatings from her father, but she didn’t seem afraid of him anymore.

She even started coming to my house. Walked right out her front door one day, up my sidewalk and my front porch steps. I was shocked when I answered the door and saw her standing there. For a moment, I just stood there staring at her.

“Aren’t ya’ gonna let me in?” she said with a grin.

She was no longer carrying the stuffed lamb by this time. Said she got rid of it. I found its remains in a heap of ash in my backyard.

Seraphina never did tell me everything about her ‘project’, but she did say that one day she was going to get away from her parents and that her project was her ticket. I had stopped asking her questions about it.

That afternoon, Seraphina spent the rest of the day at my house, tucked away in my room with me. We watched TV and talked about whatever. She bragged about stealing some of her mother’s perfume and stuck her wrists under my nose so that I could smell it. I really liked that perfume. By nightfall, when I heard my father coming in from work, Seraphina got nervous. I could see it in her eyes, her posture, the way her back stiffened and her chest stopped moving as if her lungs forgot how to work. Like a lot of things I thought about Seraphina, I thought her reaction to my father coming home from work, was strange. Especially after it seemed she wasn’t even afraid of her own father anymore. So, why would she be afraid of mine?

“Cassia!” I heard my father call out, “Come eat dinner!”

Seraphina’s eyes widened as she stared at my bedroom door.

“Just a minute, daddy!” I called out.

Turning back to Seraphina, I said with a jerk of my head toward the bedroom door, “Come on, I guess it’s time for you to go home.”

Seraphina shook her head and it seemed she didn’t even blink.

“I’ll go out the window,” she said. “I don’t want your parents telling mine that I was over here.”

She was still afraid of her father, after all, but had only gotten better at hiding it, I realized.

I nodded. “OK,” I said and walked over to my window, flipping the latch open and raising the glass.

“CASSIA!” my father shouted. “GET YOUR ASS IN HERE AND EAT!” I gasped sharply at his tone.

He was a good father—nothing like Seraphina’s father—but intolerant to disobedience.

Seraphina had just started to climb out the window, but when she heard him the second time, she stopped and looked back at me with an enraged look in her big brown eyes.

I waved my hands at her, trying to hurry her up and shuffle her over the windowsill.

“Why is he talking to you like that?” she asked with narrowed eyes and anger in her voice.

I kept looking back and forth between her and the bedroom door, growing more nervous the longer she took. I didn’t want to get grounded.

“He’s always like this when he gets home from work,” I said. “Now hurry up. I’ve gotta go.”

A few more seconds of looking between me and the door, Seraphina finally slipped outside and ran through my backyard. I saw her slip through the secret hole in the fence instead of waltzing through her front door boldly as I expected her to after so boldly coming to mine earlier.

A week later, I was sitting in the shed writing in my notebook that I kept as a journal, when Seraphina joined me. She had a spiteful and cunning look on her face, a grin that sent a chill up my back. Her eyes were dark and she looked upon me as though about to tell me something I knew was going to make me uncomfortable.

She plopped down on the concrete shed floor and kissed me on the cheek.

“Do you love me, Cassia?”

I smiled ridiculously. “Of course I do. You’re like my sister.”

She cocked her head to one side and folded her hands in the hollow of her lap.

“Remember that time you told me you wanted to go wherever I go? That you wanted us to be sisters forever, no matter what?”

I nodded with an even brighter smile, because it was true. I did want to go wherever she went. She was my best friend. I wanted us to grow up and grow old together.

“Yeah, I remember.”

She smiled and softened her eyes. “Good. Then tonight we’re going to run away together.”

My face fell and I tried to swallow the knot that had suddenly formed in my throat, but it was too dry.

“W-What do you mean, run away?” I felt guilty for even having the conversation.

Seraphina pulled me into a brief hug, afterwards letting her hands brush down the length of my arms until her fingers found mine. She held my hands firmly and said, “I want to go to New York. I’ve got it all planned out. We can get on a bus—it’s easy, they do it in the movies all the time and no one ever checks for identification unless they look like kids. But we don’t look like kids”—she waved her finger back and forth between us—“I can easily pass for seventeen, and you, well I think you could too if you put on a little makeup.”

I was shaking my head absently the whole time she was explaining her plan, but she just kept on talking with the excitement of it all ever-growing in her eyes.

“I want to be a singer,” she said with the biggest smile of wonderment I had ever seen on her face. She gripped my hands tighter. “And Cassia, you could, too. We could both be singers. You sing even better than me!”

I blushed and lowered my gaze to our hands.

“I-I don’t know, Seraphina.” I looked toward the shed door, terrified my parents might’ve been listening in. “Running away won’t be easy. My parents check in on me every night. First my mom. Then later my dad. They’d know I was missing before we made it to the bus station—and what about money? I don’t have any money.”

Seraphina grinned and leaned forward so she could reach around to her back pocket. There was a wad of cash in her hand when she brought it back around.

“Stole it from my mom’s jewelry box,” she said with a proud smirk and then placed the money into my hands. “This’ll get us both to New York.”

I looked down at the cash and then back up at her. I didn’t want to tell her no, but at the same time, I was scared. I was scared of running away. Getting caught. Getting grounded for the rest of my life.

But I think most of all, I was scared of Seraphina.

“So, are you going to leave with me?”

She sat there with her hands in her lap, her fingers coiling anxiously around one another. Her face was full of excitement and danger and risk and trouble—everything I always steered clear of. Everything I was afraid of.

But then finally I said, “But what if my parents wake up and see that I’m gone? What if they catch us before we get to New York?”

“They won’t catch us,” she said with such resolve that I couldn’t help but believe her. “I’m going to take care of that before we leave.”

Before Seraphina snuck out of my shed that afternoon and went back into her yard, I had agreed to go with her. And to trust in her, no matter what she had to do to help me get away.

I’m lying down against the bed now with my head on Fredrik’s thigh. I don’t even recall when I shifted position, I’ve been so engrossed in the memory. It’s been a year since I’ve remembered any of this, or anything about my life at all, so it’s all quite a lot to take in.

Fredrik’s hand moves softly through the top of my hair, sending shivers from the back of my neck and throughout my body. It feels like he’s consoling me, but more than that, it feels like he’s hurting and I don’t want to go on. I know he had a terrible life and that he went through some horrific things when he was a boy, things that he will probably never tell me. But I know they were much worse than anything I ever went through.

“What did Seraphina do to your parents, Cassia?” he asks in a soft voice while spearing his fingers through my long locks.

I stare out at the television on the wall across the basement and let the scene from that night play out before me as if it were playing out on the dark screen.

And then I answer, “She stabbed my father in the throat while he was downstairs asleep in his favorite chair. And then she poured gasoline she took from the shed in my backyard all over the house and set the house on fire. My mother burned to death in her room.”

A part of me misses them, but another part of me feels nothing because it was so long ago.

“I didn’t go to New York with Seraphina,” I say distantly, picturing Seraphina’s face in my mind, the way I saw her when she was driven away in the police car. The way her face was pressed against the glass as she looked at me. “I told the police what she had done and they sent her away. She admitted everything. I never saw her again.” My fingers grip the sheet beneath me on the mattress. “I never saw her again until a year ago when she found me in my apartment in New York and tried to kill me. I know she thinks she was helping me by killing my parents—I think she killed hers, too, before mine. But I betrayed her by giving her up. And now…she wants to get back at me for the life she lost.”

Fredrik says nothing for a very long time and I grow concerned about what he must be thinking. Can he still love her now that he knows what she did? It was never my intention to make him stop loving her by telling him the truth, but I can’t help but hope that maybe he will now be able to see reason.

“Fredrik?”