Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All

by Laura Ruby

And if they threw her out, they’d throw Frankie out too. Like a shower of dirty handkerchiefs over a fence. Like so much trash.

Sam went still, his eyes darting to her and darting away, like bees that refused to be kept by anyone, even well-meaning young men.

A person figures out her place in the vast and churning world very quickly, and Frankie’s was right in Ada’s shadow.

Once upon a time, she said, a girl fell in love with a man so small and weak and easily led, she died for it. She kept asking for forgiveness from the earth and stars, from God and from ghosts, but though forgiveness was offered, she never felt it, it could not touch her, it could not free her. Until she forgave herself.

She said, I do not forgive you.

Marguerite’s skin shone with tears, shone with blazing golden light. She threw back her head and cried out, not in pain, but in sheer joy, the way a bird cries midflight. Wings so black and so bright they shorted out my vision sprouted from her back, wide as the room, wide as the city. The house fell away and there was only Marguerite, burning in her own lovely fire, her lips moving, silently telling herself the story of herself, the magic words, unwinding, then raveling into a whole new form.

Don’t go, I shouted, take me with you, but she couldn’t, I was her friend but I was not of her people, she couldn’t teach me the words and I didn’t have the power to learn them.

I’d come back to punish them, but it seemed that someone already had.

But she was sure of one thing: she was going to live. She was going to live.