The Taker by Alma Katsu Page B

legs and torso. Her skin was blue all over and her eyes, mercifully, were closed.
    The men wrapped her in her cloak and took turns holding the edges, using it as a sling to carry Sophia’s body back home, while I walked behind them. My teeth chattered and my father came up tome to rub my arms in an attempt to warm me, but it did no good, for I shook and shivered from fear, not cold. I held my arms tight to my stomach, afraid I would be ill in front of my father. My presence dampened the discussion among the men and they refrained from speculating as to why Sophia had taken her life. They generally agreed, however, that Pastor Gilbert would not be told about the cape set deliberately aside. He would not know that she had been a suicide.
    When my father and I made it home, I ran straight to the fireplace and stood so close that the fire toasted my face, but even that heat could not stop my shaking. “Not so close,” my mother chided as she helped me take off my cloak, afraid no doubt that the cape might catch on a spitting ember. I would have welcomed it. I deserved to burn like a witch for what I’d done.
    A few hours later, my mother came up to me, squared her shoulders, and said, “I’m going to the Gilberts’ to help with the preparations for Sophia. I think you should come with me. It’s time you started taking your place among the women in this town and learned some of the duties that will be expected of you.”
    By now I had changed into a heavy nightgown, curled by the fire, and had drunk a mug of hot cider with rum. The drink helped to numb me, to tamp down the urge to cry out loud and confess, but I knew that I would come undone if I had to confront Sophia’s body, even in the presence of the other women in town.
    I rose up from the floor on an elbow. “I couldn’t … I don’t feel well. Still cold …”
    My mother pressed the back of her fingers to my forehead, then my throat. “If anything, I’d say you were burning with fever …” She looked at me cautiously, skeptically, then rose from the floor, tossing her cloak over her shoulders. “All right, this one time, seeing what you went through earlier …” Her words trailed off. She looked me over one more time, in a way I couldn’t quite figure out, and then slipped out the door.
    She told me later what had happened at the pastor’s house, how the women prepared Sophia’s body for burial. First, they set it by thefire to thaw, then they rinsed the river silt from her mouth and nose and gently combed out her hair. My mother described how white her skin had become from the time in the river, and how she’d been scraped with thin, red scratches after the current had dragged her corpse over submerged rocks. They dressed her in her finest dress, a yellow so pale as to be almost ivory, embellished with embroidery by her own needle and tailored to her slender frame with pin tucks. No mention was made of Sophia’s body, no abnormality, no remark of the faintest swell to the dead woman’s abdomen. If anyone noticed anything, it would be attributed to bloat, no doubt, water the poor girl had ingested as she drowned. And then a linen shroud was tucked into a plain panel coffin. A couple of men who had waited while the women completed their work loaded the coffin into a wagon and escorted it to Jeremiah’s house, where it would lie in wait for the funeral.
    As my mother calmly described the state of Sophia’s body, I felt as though nails were being driven into me, exhorting me to confess my wickedness. But I held on to my wits, if barely, and cried as my mother spoke, my hand shielding my eyes. My mother rubbed my back as though I were a child again. “Whatever is it, Lanore dear? Why are you so upset for Sophia? It is a terrible thing and she was our neighbor, yes, but I didn’t think you even knew her very well …” She sent me up to the loft with a goatskin filled with warm water and went to chide my father for taking me with him into the