The Fourth Child, Jessica Winter [fantasy novels to read txt] 📗

bark scrapes off like skin, andshe doesn’t think it hurts the tree, either.

You can call a tree all different things. A canoe birch is also called a paper birch and a white birch. You can also calla tree by its scientific name, which is in Latin, a language for trees and animals. She could say the names as many timesas she wanted, as loud as she wanted, and usually Dad didn’t mind. The American beech is Fagus grandifolia. The American chestnut is Castanea dentata. The eastern hemlock is Tsuga canadensis. The eastern cottonwood is Populus deltoides. Nobody else in her family knew Latin. No one can take it from her or tell her she’s doing it wrong.

 

When she was first learning her Latin tree names, PJ and Sean teased her about being a vampire from Transylvania. The names sounded to them like a curse in the Dracula movie they had on tape. There was a big orphanage in Transylvania, in Sighet, but that wasn’t where she came from—hers was Cighid, in Ghiorac, near the Hungarian border. Not Transylvania. She could prove it because she had it all on a map. And then there was another orphanage in Siret, in the northwest. Cighid, Sighet, Siret—in the ear of a silly American boy who had never been anywhere in the world, who never knew another language, maybe it all sounded the same. PJ and Sean had never even been to Colorado, and that’s in the same country. Mom sent away for the maps of Romania. Mirela learned the maps and tried to show them to PJ and Sean. “Cighid, not Sighet!” she said, but they didn’t know what she was talking about.

The bitternut hickory is Carya cordiformis. Bitternut gets its name because it produces nuts that nobody will eat, not even a starving squirrel.

Once, when they were looking at the maps together, Mom asked if she wanted to go back to Romania. A tantrum came over herbecause she thought Mom wanted to send her back to Cighid. And then Mom said she only meant to visit, but the only place they’dever visited was Colorado, and she didn’t want to go back there, either. Finally she understood that Mom was asking if shewanted to go to Romania just for a few days—not now, and not to stay. She was still angry at Mom because she should have knownhow to ask this question right. When she was little, she had to look for words in two languages. Mom never had to do that,and so she doesn’t think as carefully as Mirela does about the right way to say things.

Mom didn’t want her to watch PJ and Sean’s Dracula movie because it was too grown-up, which didn’t make sense because PJ andSean weren’t grown-up back then. They liked the bloody scenes and hated the kissing scenes, although some of the bloodiestscenes had kissing. Mirela did see a few minutes of the movie here and there. In one scene, hands in black gloves move overthe fur of a white wolf. The thick white fur and the soft dark leather filled the whole screen, and a warm, deep cello played.She could feel herself going inside the fur, becoming another person, a movie-person. This other person could fall asleepin the dog’s fur, curl up inside a finger of the gloves, the cello making the sound that the gloves felt like, and no onecould see her—she couldn’t see herself.

She asked Mom for a dog that looked like a white wolf, like in the movie. Mom asked if she wanted to do research on dogs first, like the research she does with the weather and the trees and the maps of Romania. She does want to visit Romania someday, but she needs to learn everything about it before she goes. She remembers some words: elefante, girafa, tigru, urs. In Romania there is only urs. Not the tigru—the lynx. The chamois, which is a cross between a goat and an antelope. And lots of wolves, like in the Dracula movie. Themovie did get that right. When a grown-up mother wolf goes out to find food and comes back with a full belly, the baby wolvesstick their snouts inside her mouth, trying to make her throw up into them. The wolves live in the Carpathians, the mountainswhere Dracula built his castle. She wishes she was from there but she’s not.

Lauren, PJ, and Sean are all from Buffalo, born at Children’s Hospital. There’s a picture of them in a fancy carved framehanging in the den, of the last summer before Mirela came. They’re standing on green grass beneath a big blue sky, arms lockedtogether, smiling into the sun. Long tan legs. They didn’t know anyone named Mirela. There are no pictures of her before agethree. She watched herself mirrored in the glass, there beside her family.

 

It’s hard to fall asleep at night because you’re waiting in the darkness until you fall inside it, and you don’t know whatwill happen to you in there. Mirela rocks at night to tire herself out, so she can forget what she’s waiting for. She sitsup cross-legged, wraps her arms around herself, and goes forward and back, forward and back. The bedsprings squeak and thebed moves around on the floor. She bumps her head against the headboard—not enough to hurt herself, no matter what Mom thinks.It crowds out the thoughts, the turning in her head, nothing else coming in, no memories no pictures no shapes no shadowsno-Mirela in the room alone thump thump thump no room for anything but thump thump thump.

One morning at breakfast PJ said something bad about the sound of the rocking of the bed, something very grown-up, and Sean gasped and Mom went scary-quiet, and Dad raised his hand and Mom jumped up and caught Dad’s arm and PJ ran away, upstairs to his room. Then Dad threw his fork across the kitchen and it clanged against the dishwasher and he walked outside to his truck and Mirela went under the table. Ears ringing,