Three: The Thornton Girls

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Annabelle

I'm the first to notice her through tear-blurred eyes, and she looks like an angel with fully grown wings open wide, and her hands and face pressed up against a grime coated window. Outside light encircles her like a blanket, and her ethereal shimmer makes me think of my twin as an angel, bright and light and happy.

But then the real Xavier catches my eye. I try not to look, but I can't help it. A bloody pile of rags dumped in the corner, stomach ripped messily apart, clumps of white and red and pink mess splattered up the wall, spread in lines around his body from when he was thrashing and screaming and pleading.

"There's a girl at the window." I tell my sisters blankly.

I don't look at her; instead, I watch my brother. If I could have taken the wounds myself, I would've. I should've tried harder. I could've stopped it.

It won't happen again; my sisters, all five of us- not six anymore- we will be safe. We'll go home.

The others have turned their attention to the window by the door, but there's nothing there. She's gone. Or is she? "Rhem, check." My mouse, still frightened from the dogs, weasels her way out from my shirt pocket and onto my hand. "I swear it, I saw someone." With a kiss on her head, I lower her and send her off. "Be careful."

"There's nobody there, Annie. Don't get your hopes up."

She's rarely quiet but shuts up when I glare at her. That's Xavier's nickname for me. Annie. "I told you. I swear it. I saw her. Pass the knife, Jackie, just in case. I'm closer to the door."

"Fuck no. Your aim is shit. We both know I can throw better with both hands chained from forty metres back than you can with the target two inches away. I'm keeping the knife."

"Fine. But when we all die, I want to you to send me off in a boat and set me on fire. Old-time style. That's all I ask."

She's right, but not holding a weapon has my hands itching at my belt. I should have hidden my daggers, like Jackie. Or stuffed my short-sword down my pants.

Rhem scuttles across the wood, nails scraping quietly. "Someone's there. A girl. Wings, rags, all covered in soot. Nobody else. Looks harmless," she whispers.

"Ha! Come out, girl. I swear, if we're both hallucinating, Jackie, you can have Rhem."

She squeaks, Jackie tries to smile, and a short silhouette with leaves in her hair and ashes on her feet cuts through the doorway.

"I'm, uh, not a hallucination. Sorry to disappoint you all."

꧁꧂

There are four other girls like me, hands, feet and wings bound with a mixture of chains and rope. I now know their names but will undoubtedly forget most of them. Halie is the eldest, nineteen. The one who got whipped- that's what the crack was. My age is unknown, but if I had to guess, I'd be somewhere between her and Annabelle.

Anna. She claims to be fifteen but looks older, despite her short stature. It's something in her sad face, or her rough hands.

Anna had a twin brother, one who got killed before I landed. Halie told me his name- Zach or Xavier. Something like that. I couldn't stand to look at the young boy whose insides were outside. And the girls had sat there, as young as eight, forced to watch their brother torn to shreds by a couple of dogs.

Then came Harriet and Jackie; also twins. They are thirteen. They talked in hushed tones in a corner of the room or about with Annabelle. Probably about their dead brother or me.

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