The Grace Year

Tierney wonders if she is being haunted by the dead girl and the sound of her red ribbon “grating against the bones of her throat” (312). She reluctantly tells the other girls a ghost story about the girl and how she was strangled with her red ribbon and left in the woods. One girl suggests that the dead girl’s ghost is looking for her killer, and Tierney wonders if the girl was killed by other grace year girls. Later, Tierney tells Gertie that there might be some truth to the ghost story, but Gertie laughs and dismisses the idea.

The next morning, Tierney’s ribbon is tied around her neck in a careful knot that tightens when she pulls on it. Kiersten hints that Tierney might not believe in the magic at all. As the girls regain their clarity, Tierney wonders “how long it will take until Kiersten remembers that she wants [Tierney] dead” (316). Tierney decides to stop giving power to the “ghosts.” She tells the girls that she doesn’t hear the ghosts anymore, but to her surprise, several of them claim that they can hear the ghosts because of the ghost water. The girls might be purged of the hemlock silt, but it “helped them see what they already believed” (318).

One night, Tierney wakes to the sound of footsteps outside the larder door, and she feels a “dark presence oozing from beneath the door” (319). There is a scream from the lodging house, and by the time Tierney looks outside, she sees a shadowy figure fleeing the camp. All of the girls wake up and gather outside, and one of the girls explains that she saw “[a] ghost hovering near the larder door” on her way to the privy (319). She only saw its eyes, and Tierney believes that Anders has returned to kill her.

One morning, Tierney wakes to find Kiersten standing over her with a hatchet. She demands to know why Tierney came back, and Tierney lies and says that she wanted to get rid of her magic. Kiersten storms off, and Tierney can’t find her cloak, which she has been wearing even in the hot summer weather. Gertie looks down at Tierney “like she’s just seen a ghost” as Tierney hurries to cover herself (321). Tierney realizes that Helen probably stole her coat, and she goes looking for her in the woods.

As Tierney heads into the woods, Gertie follows her. Tierney tells Gertie about Ryker and how they fell in love and planned to run away together. Gertie warns Tierney that she’s “running out of time” (325), and she encourages Tierney to run away with Ryker: Gertie and Michael can speak up on behalf of Tierney’s sisters if she disappears. Tierney shows Gertie the bones of the dead girl, which have moved once again. She tells Gertie about Anders and how he might be inside the fence waiting to strike. Tierney plans to stake out the girl’s bones that night and see for herself what is happening.

As night falls, Tierney hides in the trees. Time passes, and just when she is beginning to think this is a wasted effort, she hears footsteps, someone breathing, and the sound of the scratching ribbon, “slow, steady, deliberate, obsessive” (329). She accidentally kicks loose some dirt, which gets the attention of the person, and as they walk toward her, she feels the “charcoal-gray fabric” of the poacher’s shroud “billow over her” in the wind (329).

Tierney passes out, and when she regains consciousness, the shrouded person is gone. The dead grace year girl’s bones have been moved again, and the girl now rests in the infamous position expected of all women: “[l]egs spread, arms flat, eyes to God” (330). Blood has been smeared around where the girl’s lips would be, and two black calla lilies—ill omens—have been placed in her eye sockets. Tierney believes that Anders is behind this because he “likes to play with bones” and “knows the language of flowers” (330).

When Tierney returns to the camp, the girls are gathered in the lodging house. Someone has killed Helen’s pet dove and used its blood to write the word “WHORE” on the wall of the lodging house. They tell her that Helen was last seen “skipping into the woods” wearing Tierney’s cloak because she said it would “[give] her powers” (333). They find Helen strangled to death with her red ribbon on the edge of the woods, “[j]ust like the girl on the ridge” (334). Tierney believes that Anders thought Helen was Tierney and that he won’t stop terrorizing the camp until he’s killed her.

Tierney tells the girls that there are no ghosts: A poacher has snuck into the encampment. Gertie backs her up, and the girls realize that Tierney and Gertie are telling the truth. Tierney offers to hide in the woods again and lure the poacher away from the camp so he won’t hurt any more girls, but Kiersten says that Tierney has to “put Helen outside the gate” so her little sisters won’t be punished (335). Tierney agrees, and she treats Helen’s body as gently as she can, even as she sees the “shadowy figures” of the poachers “emerging from the tree line” (336), ready to claim Helen’s body.

In the woods, Tierney creates a spike trap in hopes of ensnaring Anders. As she waits on the ridge for the trap to spring, she thinks about Ryker and the months that have passed since she left him. Tierney waits all night, but finally, there are footsteps, the scratching sound, and the “wet crunching sound of his body being impaled” (338).

Tierney is shocked to see that she hasn’t impaled Anders, but Hans. She jumps to help him, but she discovers that he was advancing on her with a knife. Hans stole Anders’s shroud, and the scratching sound is coming from him: He is “rubbing his hand over his breast pocket,” where the “frayed end of a faded red ribbon” peeks out (340). She realizes that Hans has been terrorizing the camp, not Anders, and the dead girl in the woods is Olga Vetrone: Hans’s lover whom he killed. He accuses Tierney of leading him on for years, and he calls her a “whore” who “soiled [her] flesh with a poacher” (341). Tierney leaves him to die from the spike wounds.

At the camp, the girls have captured and killed a poacher near the breach in the fence. Tierney panics, but she isn’t relieved even when she learns that the poacher isn’t Ryker. Instead, she turns on the girls and calls them murderers, pointing out that they have condemned the man’s family to starvation. Kiersten declares that it isn’t murder, “[i]t’s the grace year” (343). Another girl says their magic made them do it. Tierney reveals the truth about the contaminated water, and she tells the girls that they have chosen to be evil: They “hurt each other because it’s the only way [they’re] permitted to show [their] anger” (344). She ties her red ribbon to the punishment tree, and privately, Gertie promises to make a distraction while Tierney slips away to find Ryker.

Tierney burns the bones of the dead grace year girl and takes Anders’s stolen shroud from Hans. She climbs through the breach in the fence and heads toward Ryker’s hunting blind, but she is surprised to see the poachers getting into canoes and leaving the island already. Ryker grabs her from behind, and when he runs his hands “down [her] body, over [her] waist” (348), he suddenly stops, overcome. Tierney explains that she left because of Anders’s threat but that she came back because she wants to run away with him. Ryker embraces her and promises that they will “find a way” to be together (349).

Tierney and Ryker return to his hunting blind and spend the night together, and they talk about their future together. Ryker explains that the poachers are leaving because the hunting season is nearly over. They make a plan to go east and find a place “where [they] can live as man and wife” (350), and Ryker reveals that Anders was worried about a guard who might have known about Ryker and Tierney. Tierney realizes that this was Hans, and she decides not to tell Ryker about what happened in the woods with the dead girl’s bones and Hans.

Tierney and Ryker pack up their supplies and start their journey off the island. However, they are intercepted by a pair of poachers. Ryker orders Tierney to run to the gate and try to get to safety behind the barrier. One of the poachers throws a knife that enters Ryker’s stomach, and they order him to give up “the prey.” Ryker tries to fight the poachers, and Anders appears to try to stop the fighting. Ryker is killed when one of the poachers “drags [a] knife across [his] throat” (354), and with his dying breath, Ryker tells Tierney to run for her life.

Anders is furious and says that “[i]t was only supposed to be [Tierney]” who died (355), not Ryker. Tierney takes off running and heads for the barrier gate. The poachers throw knives at her, and when she reaches the gate, she begs the girls to let her back in. The girls hesitate, but as the poachers close in on Tierney, the gate swings open and Tierney is pulled inside.

Tierney lands inside the camp, and her torn cloak “[exposes] [her] body for all to see” (356). Kiersten calls her a “whore.” Kiersten says they have to burn all of the supplies like the girls before them. The girls hesitate, and sensing that she is losing her control over them, Kiersten insists that “[t]he magic is real” (357). She decides to prove it by going outside of the barrier, and a poacher quickly descends on her and holds a knife to her throat. Tierney and the other girls prepare to fight, and Tierney orders the poacher—Anders—to go home because “[t]here’s a family that needs [him]” (359). Slowly, Anders lowers his weapon, lets Kiersten go, and disappears.

Kiersten has lost her nerve, and the girls turn to Tierney for guidance. She says they should “[leave] this place how [they] would’ve liked to have found it” for the next group of girls (360). During their last day, the girls clean the camp, cover the contaminated well and mark it with the word “POISON,” and chop down and burn the punishment tree. Tierney thinks of the girl in her dreams, and she “want[s] to believe there’s a part of [the girl] that lives in [Tierney]” and in “every single one of [them]” (362). The girls clean themselves up, and they hope that their return to the county will signal that times are changing for the better.