The Springborn

SABELLA

JUNE 16, 1886

AFTERNOON

I n the dandelion-carpeted cemetery behind the brick church, Calder and I watch from the rear of the small crowd as the hunch-shouldered pastor murmurs a psalm over Mother’s open grave. We arrived just in time for the service, after journeying until nightfall, spending the night in the woods (I slept in the wagon bed and Calder camped on the grass under it), and then hurrying the horse over the last few miles to Miners Ridge Cemetery.

Perspiration trickles from under the edge of my black bonnet and down the slope of my forehead as Father tosses a handful of soil onto the simple pine casket. The sound of the dirt hitting the box scrapes my heart like a dull knife. The world seems devoid of air. Is it possible to drown on dry land?

Grimly, Father eyes me from the other side of the grave. He folds his coal-stained hands over the mound of his belly. A dozen mourners line up to offer him handshakes and sympathetic words before they disperse, one by one. When the last parishioner traipses away across the short, dull grass, he comes to me.

Purple, sagging skin bunches under his eyes. Smudges of coal dust stain his earlobes and throat, evidence that Mother no longer aids him in bathing.

“Sabella,” he says flatly. “Is this the boy you abandoned your mother for?”

Calder tenses beside me as he takes a small step forward. I know he’s ready to defend his honor and mine. I give him a look that says no . I can defend myself.

“This is my friend Calder, Father.”

“You have my sympathies,” Calder says politely.

Father grunts, refusing to shake the hand Calder offers. “If you’re sorry Mother’s gone, girl, you can come home and try to be the good daughter she spent her every breath trying to raise right. Last time you ran off, she told the neighbors you’d gone to visit an aunt in the country. So as long as we say this here boy they’ve seen is a cousin, no one need know you’ve been living in sin. Unless there’s to be…consequences?” He gestures toward my waistline.

“Sir!” Calder says. His fingers ball into fists at his sides. “There’s no need to be crass. Sabella is a respectable?—”

“Please,” I say, stepping into the space between them. “This is no place for fighting.”

Father grunts again. He kicks a pebble. “You have a carriage, boy?”

“A wagon, sir. May I drive you home?”

“Much obliged,” Father says without actually looking into Calder’s face or sounding genuinely thankful.

“Should I bring the wagon to the gate?” Calder asks, meeting my gaze. Behind these words is another question. He’s asking if I’ll feel safe alone with my father.

“That would be appreciated,” I reply.

As Calder strides off, a cloud covers the sun. I adjust my gloves, unable to think of a single thing to say to my father. A murder of crows lights on the ridge of the church roof and fills the air with rough caws.

Father kicks another pebble with his scuffed shoe. “House is a right mess. It’ll take you a full week to straighten up, I reckon. Your mother was bedridden from the day you left until she passed, and I had extra shifts to boot.”

As if he would have lifted a finger to help with the housework, mine or no mine.

“I will stay for the afternoon to help get things in order,” I offer. The very thought makes my chest feel as if a fully loaded coal car is rolling over it. I follow him toward the gate and try to think of something besides the soul-sickening notion of going back home with this man.

“You will stay until you find a proper husband or bury me,” he says sternly. He swings open the gate. “You owe me that much, child. Have I not kept a roof over your head and put food on the table for you since the old witch gave you to me?”

“You have,” I say, wanting to remind him that he did it without love or tenderness. My head itches, and I imagine I can feel my antlers growing, slowly, slowly, even as I remember how he hacked them off every single morning.

Calder halts the horses and slides across the bench to pull me up onto the seat beside him. Instead of climbing into the wagon bed, Father clambers aboard and settles next to me. Squashed between the two men, I ponder their differences. Where Father is taciturn and irritable, Calder is witty and kindhearted. Father is motivated by a desire to survive while appearing respectable, but Calder is driven by his love for life and his Springborn family.

The wagon slows as we approach the house where I grew up.

“What was she like, the woman who gave me to you in the basket?” I ask Father. I need to hear this from his mouth, for I may never see him again after today.

“Old,” he says. “Old and wrinkled as an apple gone bad. But a body could tell she’d been comely in her day. Her eyes…I’ve never seen their equal. Green-blue like the river on a fair day.”

“The winter Delphine,” Calder says quietly.

The horse stops and the wagon sways. Father jumps to the ground and offers his hand to me. “Come on, girl.”

I grip the bench hard. “Tell me, Father. Did you ever love me at all?”

His eyes mist over—which is a surprise. “Aye. You were a pretty little thing, sweet as the day is long.”

“But then I grew antlers.”

His expression hardens as he peers up at me. “We prayed for a child, not a curse.”

“I was still the same child, your child, no matter what grew out of my head.”

“Is that why you’re hesitating there? Because of the bedeviled antlers? It’s no matter. No trouble we can’t solve every morning with a saw and a few minutes of toil.”

“My antlers are not trouble . They are part of me as much as my hands or feet.”

He spits on the ground. “Words. I’ll not quarrel with you over words. I’m a miner, not a scholar.”

Calder squeezes my arm reassuringly, bolstering my courage.

“Goodbye, then, Father.” Tears veil my vision as I turn my face away from him.

With a shake of the reins, Calder commands the horses to carry us away.