CRICKET
July in the swamp was a born nightmare. Heat slithered through the canals and ditches like a cottonmouth bent on killing something for the plain hell of it. Even in the early morning, before the sun broke through the cypress trees and tinted the Spanish moss a sickly gold, it crept in through the shack’s screen door, and Cricket, stirred awake by the weight in her chest and the sweat beading under her arms, shed her white nightdress, letting it pool around her ankles.
No sense in picking it up. Whenever Lake got back from her own morning swim, she’d put it in its proper place, which was on one of the hooks by the window. Lake liked having a proper place for everything.
Cricket figured that since they were two sisters living in a swamp swarming with mosquitos and yellow jackets and all other manner of creepy-crawly creatures, there wasn’t much point in being neat and tidy. Neat and tidy for who, exactly?
“Us, I guess,” she muttered to herself, enjoying the music of her own voice. Sometimes, when Lake wasn’t there and she started getting lonely, she talked to fill the space, to remind herself she was more than the bullfrogs croaking and the actual crickets strumming songs in the reeds.
Never one to sit in silence, she padded out onto the front porch, naked as a newborn babe. For a while, she delighted in the sounds swelling around her, high-pitched ribbits and desperate mating calls and the gentle rustle of fluttering wings.
The blue dawn hung heavy over the marsh. Mist shifted over the water, and Cricket thought about the stories Lake used to tell about witches and the green potions they boiled in cauldrons. When she was a girl, she used to pretend she and Lake were swamp witches made for protecting all the things that hopped and slinked and crawled through the wetlands. It was an easy way of explaining things. Wrong. But easy.
She dipped her toe into the water, drawing patterns that rippled toward the grove of cypress trees on the other side of the canal. A watersnake glided past her, and she smiled and watched it go. Its scales glistened as it cut a path toward the trees, a path that could lead it to the lake if it kept a nice pace for an hour or two. But it was a little thing. It’d probably tucker out before then, stretch out on the retaining wall the commune had built to keep out the black bears and dull the sound of passing boats.
“Go as far as you can get, little one,” she said, and like it could hear her, it whipped its tail and took off into the marsh, leaving a tiny ribbon of white water in its wake. “This place ain’t meant for gentle things.”
She swung both legs over the side of the dock. Then, with a breath, she lowered herself into the swamp.
The water, a soup of silt and mud and moss, flowed over her head, and Cricket closed her eyes and kept perfectly still. Algae clung to her like silk, forming a kind of second skin. Her shoulders and the backs of her knees, burnt from her venture out to the lake a few days ago, sighed in relief. Nothing better than a morning swim to revive what was dead, keep a girl young, Lake had said once.
“Well,” she’d chuckled, “nothing natural, I mean.”
“Yeah, but why can’t we just start swimming straight off?” Cricket had asked. “You say we’ve gotta soak for a bit, why’s that exactly?”
“Cuz the algae’s like a salve,” she’d answered. “Helps you look…well, you know…”
“More human.” Under the water, Cricket opened her eyes and mouthed the words. They turned to bubbles that drifted up toward the surface like a wish. Like a prayer. Because the swamp was the only home Cricket had ever known, and so it was the closest thing she had to a god.
Satisfied she’d soaked long enough, Cricket swung her legs back and kicked off from the dock.
For a moment, the rest of the world fell away. It was just her and the water and the familiar rush swirling in her ears, and with those things to hold her attention, she didn’t have to think about anything else. She surrendered to the hypnotic rhythm of the stroke, delighting in the resistance, the fight the swamp demanded. Her feet pulsed behind her, a steady one-two, one-two drumming in time with her heartbeat. She was muscle and bone rocketing forward, slipping past fallen branches and rotting trees, at home with the lizards and toads and snakes swimming right there alongside her.
But she was cursed with a mind that never slowed down, and so the peace didn’t last. Thoughts nibbled at her as she reached the first fork in the canal.
The first was which way to go. Left would take her toward the compound, where she might catch sight of the sad fisherman with his far-off look. Right would take her to the Hollow, where she could stretch out on one of the banks and let the morning roll right past her. Of course, getting to the Hollow meant dodging about three hiking trails, and in the thick of summer, they were bound to be crawling with families and loners alike who, despite it already being sweltering enough to make a grown man faint, would insist they were beating the heat.
She chose left. At least with the compound, she knew what she was getting. The ladies she sometimes saw winding their way through the trees wouldn’t pay her any mind. Hell, the fisherman might even bow his head in hello, and that could sure help her out. Because sometimes, when it had been a few days and she hadn’t seen a single soul except for Lake, she started to believe she wasn’t real at all, that she was some imagined creature dreamed into existence.
And what kind of proof did she have to the contrary, outside of the water holding her up, the gentle burn in her arms and legs as she sped up her stroke? She’d watched hundreds of people trudge through the trails that wound through the swamp like wooden serpents. Most of the little ones called after the adults who forged ahead of them. They shouted words like “mama,” “mom,” and “mommy,” or “pa,” “dad,” and “daddy.” Sometimes they talked fast as lightning, and other times the words dribbled out of their mouths real slow-like, but they were always the same words. Cricket had never seen a little one in the swamp without at least a mama or a papa. And since most of the time, the kids looked a whole lot like the mamas or the papas, she figured one had to have created the other.
Except Cricket was a person, far as she could tell. And for as long as she could remember, there had only ever been Lake.
Without a mommy or daddy to tell her where she came from, there was no way of knowing where came from exactly. Lake had stories, of course, stories that painted the two of them as powerful beings with magic dancing in their veins. Except not all the stories were fairytales. Some of them were plain horrifying, stories that would keep those kids waddling along the walkways from ever sleeping again.
She slowed as she approached the retaining wall. The sun was making its climb into the sky, and spears of golden light pierced the water. An hour ago, it would have been impossible to spot the hook floating five strokes ahead of her. The sneakers, on the other hand, were perfectly visible. They hovered above the surface, the white rubber soles tinted yellow by the algae.
She popped her head up, and the fisherman, perched on top of the retaining wall, jolted back so fast, he toppled onto the grass behind him.
“Fuck.” He groaned and sat up, sucking in a strained breath. He was young, though how young she couldn’t be sure. Twenty-two, twenty-three maybe? Most of the people who lived in the commune were as pale as she was, with heads of blonde or brunette hair. His skin shimmered like stirred silt, and his crow-black hair flopped over his forehead. There was always a furrow between his dark brows, and while he smiled and laughed and grimaced like everyone else, Cricket got the sense he was scared. She wasn’t sure how she knew, given she’d never spent much time with anyone. Maybe it was in the slope of his shoulders, or how wide his eyes got whenever something surprised him.
Or maybe, like her sister said, she could smell it.
“You can’t sneak up on me like that.” He pushed himself onto his feet, wiping stray pieces of grass from his black t-shirt. He bent to pick up the fishing pole. “Thought you were an alligator.”
Cricket squinted at him. Alligators didn’t live in her swamp. She’d seen one or two passing through, but only in August, and only on the Southern-most border, miles away from where they were now.
The reel clicked as he tightened the line, and the sound vibrated in Cricket’s teeth. It was too mechanical, a miniature of the motors that left ribbons of slick oil in the marsh and the little cases the hikers carried around with them, the ones that lit up and chimed and rang, sending the critters running for their hidey holes.
“You ever going to tell me your name?” the fisherman asked, eyes finding her again. They were the color of rain-soaked peat, the outside ring blending with the black center. “Or is this one of those friendships where we don’t really talk but we get each other?”
She smiled, not because what he’d said was funny, but because no one had ever called her a friend before. It rushed through her like honey, smooth and warm, and she opened her mouth to tell him her name was Cricket and she’d like to know his too when his face darkened. Gripping the fishing rod tight in one hand, he pointed with the other.
“Snake!” His shout thundered through the trees, sending a flock of warblers shooting into the painted sky.
Cricket whipped around. Slithering toward her, its pointed head tilted toward the tree canopy, was a huge copperhead. Its red tongue licked at the air as it moved toward her, and in the morning sunlight, the chestnut pattern on its back burned orange. It was twice as thick as it should have been, so she knew it was pregnant—which meant it was ten kinds of uncomfortable and twenty kinds of angry.
“Sst!” Cricket pressed the sound through her teeth and thrust her hand out of the water. The snake froze, its body buoyed by the duckweed and the air in its lungs. She stared into its amber eyes, right into the black slits sitting at their center, and took a long, quiet breath. Then, she started to hum, four notes building up, four notes dropping down, the basic cords of a song.
The snake reared up, half its body rising out of the water.
“Are you fucking crazy?” the fisherman shouted behind her, but Cricket didn’t turn around. She and the snake gazed at each other, and the creature swayed side to side, keeping time with her rhythm. When she was certain the beat had settled in the snake’s body, that a sudden stop would startle it away, she sucked in a sharp breath, cutting the song short. The snake coiled back, then shot right, darting through the water like she’d set it on fire.
On the bank, the fisherman made a noise Cricket had never heard before, a cross between a laugh and a scream, but not wicked enough to be a cackle. A sigh, maybe? Was that what Lake had called it? Again, she didn’t spend enough time with people to know all their different sounds. All she had were her sister’s and her own, and neither of them made much noise at all.
“How did you…” But he stopped talking and made the noise again. “I mean, that was…”
Something clenched in Cricket’s chest.
“Whenever someone starts asking questions, that’s when you leave.” Lake said it nearly twice a week, so often it was branded into her brain. “We don’t need people hunting us. A glimpse every now and then’s fine, but they start getting curious, and this little life we’ve got, it’s over.”
And if she was honest with herself, she wanted it to be over, but only in the sense that she wanted something else. Something more. She wanted to eat whatever it was people carried around in that shiny paper and the little golden rods that came with it, the ones that smelled like salt. She wanted to cling to the side of one of the boats that drifted through the canals and hold on until it brought her to wherever it was everyone else came from.
She wanted someone to lift up her long, blonde hair and kiss the back of her neck, wrap their arms around her waist and hold her close, feel their heat against her and know she was loved. Man, woman, didn’t matter. The desire ached like a full-body bruise.
But if she or Lake got captured and carted off somewhere to be poked or prodded—or worse, ripped open so men could grab at their insides—then she would never get to do any one of those things.
So she didn’t let the fisherman finish his questions. Instead, she twisted around and dove back under the water, swimming for home like a storm was on her heels. She thought she heard him call out, and she ignored the temptation to turn back, to share something with him, make a mark on another person’s life so she wouldn’t have to feel so invisible anymore.
By the time she reached the shack, it was mid-morning. The wooden planks of the dock, bathed in sunlight, seared her palms as she pushed herself out of the marsh. She winced and dashed inside before they could do the same to her feet.
The shack door slapped closed behind her, and she reached for the towel that should have been hanging beside it, but there was nothing but empty wall and the tiny sunflowers speckled all over the wallpaper. The old woman who used to live there, who’d died on the kitchen floor fifteen years ago, had plastered it all over the house. Lake found it tacky and horrible, but it brightened up the place, gave it character, so Cricket liked it okay.
“What’s wrong?”
Cricket startled at the sound of her sister’s voice. She turned to find her lounging on the chaise by the window, bare legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, one strap of her forest green sundress hanging off one shoulder, wet hair spilling like ink down the other.
“Don’t do that.” The blush bloomed in Cricket’s cheeks, creeping up to her ears, and she crossed her arms over her naked breasts and scowled.
Her sister’s eyes, as wide-set and big as her own, narrowed, and her lips pursed and drifted playfully to the left side of her face. “I’ve seen it all before anyways. Got all the same parts as you. And I’m not sure you know this, but they look exactly the same, too.”
Cricket lifted her chin. She didn’t like it when Lake played with her. “Where’s the towel?”
“Where you left it.” Lake kicked her head toward the back of the shack. There was a small platform that led up to a queen-sized bed. The iron was rickety and rusted, but it still held up a mattress and two women just fine.
The bright yellow towel—everything this woman had owned was a god awful yellow—lay wadded up against the footboard. Cricket padded across the old floorboards, nailed together by a half-drunk fool probably. Her sister smiled as she passed by, and the knot behind Cricket’s ribs tightened. They were reflections of each other in every way, with the same heart-shaped mouth and the same color eyes, the left one mossy green, the right one like pine sap. But where Cricket was so blonde her hair looked white, Lake’s hair was a winter night, smooth and black all the way through. And sometimes, when Cricket looked at her, she swore she saw a shadow stirring beneath her thick, black brows, like there was some other creature wearing her skin.
She shivered and the thought became vapor, evaporating as she swiped the towel off the floor.
“You gonna answer my question?” Lake asked as Cricket dragged the towel across her body. Not that drying off mattered much. In this humidity, she’d be wet again in minutes. “What’s so wrong you gotta come rushing in here like an army’s chasing you?”
“Nothing,” Cricket shrugged. “It’s just that fisherman I told you about?”
Lake nodded. “Bo.”
“What?” Cricket had stared good and hard. First of all, that man did not look like a Bo. Second of all, how did—
“He’s Hugh Parson’s son,” Lake said. “Well, adopted son, he’s apparently from some place called Korea.”
The anger roiled in Cricket’s gut. “Oh yeah? How do you know that?”
Lake’s head ticked sideways. “Cricket…”
“Cuz you’re always telling me don’t talk to anyone.” She wrapped the towel around her like a dress and let her wet hair flow down her back. “You’re always saying, Cricket, don’t go blabbing, cuz if you blab, people are gonna come and tear up our shack and take us away and—”
“Hugh Parsons owns the commune, Crickee,” Lake cut in, and Cricket swallowed the rest and held it in her lungs. “Everyone who comes through this swamp knows his name, most of them donate money to his cause, so yeah, I talked to him. It’s not like we’re sitting down for breakfast, okay, it’s been once or twice when he’s come across me, that’s all. He thinks I live in town, that I’m interested in joining his little…whatever it is they call it. Gang, maybe.”
“Cult.” Cricket never knew something Lake didn’t know. It felt good, like winning a game of cards twice in a row. “I’ve heard other people talking about them, they say it’s a cult.”
Lake blinked at her. “Right, well. Whatever it is, I thought it might be a good idea if we made friendly. Because far as I can tell, they’re not leaving, so it’s probably best they think we’re…I don’t know, normal.”
Cricket thought about what Bo had seen, how she’d charmed the snake, chased it straight off. She thought about the strange noise that rang in his throat and how he’d looked at her like she was some miracle, some mythical creature that couldn’t be real.
“It’s pretty obvious we’re not.” Cricket looked down at her feet. She curled her toes in, then flattened them out again. They weren’t webbed. They weren’t talons meant for tearing flesh. They were just feet, made for walking, for running, for dancing. Things humans did. Things she could do, too.
Things she wanted to do somewhere else.
“Hey, I know that look.” Lake swung her legs over the side of the chaise and opened her arms.
Cricket’s bottom lip quivered, and the tears made the room blur. “I’m all wet.”
“Get the hell over here.”
So Cricket shuffled over and laid her head in her sister’s lap. She closed her eyes as Lake pulled her fingers through her hair, and while she wasn’t sure what life looked like out in the world beyond, she thought this was probably what sisters did everywhere.
“Who needs normal,” Lake whispered, “when you’ve got extraordinary?”