Chapter 18 #2
I lean my hands on the counter, hanging my head back. “Don’t get all flustered,” I say, rolling my head around to look at her. “He practically sprung away from me as soon as he heard you knocking, as if he would rather be caught dead than so close to me.”
“Okay,” she says, taking a step towards me. “But you guys aren’t merely friends anymore, are you?”
“I suppose not,” I say, although I don’t have any idea about what we are now—not after all of that. I shake my head. “What brought you here, anyhow?”
“I wondered if you could use some help with those,” she replies, nodding to the pile of journals on the table.
I hesitate. As much as I would love the help, I don't want Cedar any more involved in this than she already is. “I’m okay,” I say.
This is my family, their mess, their secrets.
Cedar just raises her eyebrows, her eyes surveying me head to toe. “Please,” she says. “You’re drowning, I can see it.”
I scoff, but I can't exactly disagree. “Did anyone tell you that you’re a master of compliments?”
Cedar swallows her smile before grabbing my hands in hers. “You don’t need to protect me from whatever it is you think you are protecting me from, Everleigh.” My stomach turns, because I can’t help but feel like that’s exactly what I need to do. “I know what I'm getting into here,” she says.
I shake my head. “I don’t think you do.”
“Do you?” She tips her head. My hesitation provides her with her answer. Neither of us has a single clue what this is. “What we saw yesterday, it wasn’t…ordinary.”
“No,” is all I can say with a small shake of my head.
“I know you like to figure everything out by yourself, but you don’t always have to,” Cedar says, and my shoulders fall. “Come on. I’m a quicker reader than you are anyhow.”
I shake my head as she wanders over to the table, grabbing a journal before draping herself over the lounge.
Warmth floods me at her gesture, but apprehension still sits in my gut. She’s stepping headfirst into whatever this is, and it worries me, but she’s right. It will be a lot easier with help, and if anyone knows about Nameria’s history, it’s Cedar.
“Have you heard of a place named Arizaya?” I ask, opening the drawer to retrieve the journal from earlier, the name lingering in my mind.
Cedar’s eyes narrow. “Arizaya?” She mutters, shaking her head. “I have never heard of it. Where is it?”
“I haven’t got the slightest clue.”
Her brows draw together. “Hmm. Maybe a town in one of the provinces far north?”
“Maybe,” I mutter, finding my perch on the same chair as earlier. But as the old map of Nameria my father had in his study appears in my mind, I try to remember the names of the territories near and far, but Arizaya doesn’t sound at all familiar.
The room is silent for a while, the two of us engrossed in our research.
I continue reading my mother’s personal journal.
She talks about meeting my father and becoming with child soon after they wed.
I know I should be searching for things, reading between the lines, but I cannot stop the ache within me while reading her words and being inside her head just for a moment.
It makes me feel close to her, even when we are worlds apart.
“Everleigh?”
I look up. “Hm?”
“Does Silas know…any of it?” Cedar asks. “Did you tell him?”
I look down at my lap, shaking my head as I close over the journal. “I didn’t know how to.” I look up. “This all feels dangerous enough as it is, Cedar. The more people that we drag into this…” I shake my head once more.
“I know.” She tips her head. “But the closer you get to him, the harder it is going to be to keep it from him. We don’t know what any of this is in any case.”
“I think that is precisely what makes it feel so dangerous to me.” Cedar just nods, as if not having any argument to that.
If we knew what we were looking for, it might make the worry in my gut stop churning so much, but we are just aimlessly searching for what the gods only know—for anything, really.
If it turns out that my mother was involved in something worth hiding—for whatever reason, then I don’t know if I could tell Silas. Someone needs to hold on to the image of her that we all believed in before she died. Someone needs to continue believing that she was who we thought she was.
I shake the thoughts away, and open the journal to reread the same passage from earlier.
“It seems that my mother came here from this Arizaya. She says she left everything behind and started anew with my father, so why have we never heard of it?”
Cedar sits up, her eyes glued to the pages she is flicking through. “You might want to take a look at this.”
The anxious tone in her voice has me standing immediately, leaving the journal open on the table as I move to sit beside her.
“This is your dagger, no?” she says as she drops the book in my lap, pointing at the page where a sketch is pressed into the parchment, delicate lines creating a perfect depiction of the dagger that sits under my pillow.
“Yes,” I breathe. “That’s the dagger.”
Mrs. Thorley was right, this was my mother’s dagger. So how did Rylan’s mother have it in her possession, and why did he give it to me?
“I can’t find anything about it,” she says as she begins flipping the pages. “Which is strange because this book is filled with sketches of random things and what they can do in some way, but most of it doesn’t make sense—it’s as if it is all written in riddles.”
I frown as I watch sketch after sketch go past as Cedar finds the right page. “Here,” she says, landing on a page that has sketches of fungi littering the page, all of them the same shape and style. I knew my mother could draw, but not like this.
Laccaria amethystina is scrawled at the top of the page.
“But look.” Cedar points to the other side of the page where a sketch of the very locket hanging from my neck is pictured.
I reach a hand up, my fingers finding the chain around my neck. “What…”
“Read this.” Cedar points once more, now to the scripture in between all the various sketches.
A journey is not complete without a blanket to carry with you, for you cannot speak when a chill reaches your bones.
You must keep your mind open, willing to hear when they speak, and carry your blanket, so you too can speak back.
My stomach churns. “What in the gods’ names does all of that mean?”
“I don’t know.” Cedar shakes her head. “But Everleigh,” her voice drops to a whisper, “perhaps your mother kept all of this hidden for a reason.”
A west wind pushes through the trees, tossing my skirts and brushing over the tops of my feet as I search the forest floor for a cluster of purple mushrooms hiding in a world of trampled leaves and sprouting flowers.
I’ve spent too long cooped up in my cabin.
I’ve been poring over my mother’s words for days now, and still I haven’t found anything concrete.
All I have found is riddle upon riddle, nothing either I or Cedar have been able to decipher.
But there is one that I cannot get out of my mind, the one that has me out foraging for the first time in weeks looking for a certain purple mushroom.
After a little research at the library, I discovered that the Laccaria amethystina is a purple fungus, one that can be found living in harmony with oak trees and is often found in late summer. I’m entirely aware that it is the wrong season, but I am hoping that the gods grant me a favour.
I have been out here for long enough that I cannot see the sun shining through the branches any longer, and the breeze has a slight chill to it as it tumbles in my long skirts once again.
I have managed to fill my basket with plenty of liquorice root, jasmine, and even a few leaves of mint as I have been searching.
As soon as I saw the signature shape of the leaves hiding on the forest floor, I thought of Silas. I thought of his smile, and his laugh, and the small beauty spot above his full, brown eyebrow on the left side of his face.
I thought of his lips on mine, and the way he escaped my cabin in a hurry.
I tried to think of more, of unbuttoning his pants, and pulling his dirty blouse over his head, but my heart stopped me, not wanting to inflict any more pain than necessary.
I’m not sure if Silas will ever so much as kiss me again.
He told me this is everything to him, that I am everything, yet I haven’t seen him since that day.
Through all of my hours of foraging and overanalysing, I haven’t seen a hint of the mushrooms. I have seen button white, and classic toadstools, but nothing purple.
I huff a sigh, laying down my basket as I sink down onto the forest floor and rest against the thick trunk of an old oak tree standing tall in the forest.
I close my eyes, wondering how long it will take me to reach my cabin, and if night will have fallen by the time I reach the front steps.
I taste the now familiar tang of fear on my tongue as I wonder if The Royal Shield will be patrolling the edges of the forest.
One more moment, and then I will go.
My eyes squint open as I hear a light rustling in the leaves beside me. I don’t fret, simply because it’s a small enough noise to only be from an animal.
I peek beside me to see a small hare chewing intently where he sits just beside my basket. I feel an overwhelming sense of comfort in his company—he’s not watching me, he’s not bothered by my presence, he’s simply existing next to me, and I him.
That's when I notice the string of deep purple hanging from the corner of his mouth. I sit up straight, watching him as he turns his head, looking through the trees. That's definitely purple, and it’s definitely not a flower.
“Where did you get that?” I coo.
The animal ticks its head to look at me before hopping away in the opposite direction. I swiftly reach for my basket, hooking it in the crook of my elbow before following after him.
He looks back, almost as if to check I am following before he continues on, weaving between the trees and hopping around corners.
I feel like a fool, thinking that maybe he can understand me, that maybe he’s leading me to exactly what I am looking for, when he’s most likely simply heading back to his burrow.
He slows significantly, before tucking himself behind a tree and disappearing. I have to blink twice to convince myself I am not dreaming, because right beside the deep burrow dug into the dirt, there is a small cluster of perfect purple mushrooms peeking out from under a blanket of moss.
A blanket.
I reach into the pocket of my skirts, pulling out the piece of parchment where I replicated the riddle from my mother’s journal.
A journey is not complete without a blanket to carry with you, for you cannot speak when a chill reaches your bones.
You must keep your mind open, willing to hear when they speak, and carry your blanket, so you too can speak back.
Is this what she meant? Is this the thing I am supposed to carry with me, the moss?
I don’t understand who I am meant to be speaking to, or how any kind of moss is going to help me, but I pluck some from the soil, nonetheless.
Somehow, following this riddle, this path my mother left, makes me feel closer to her. Even if this is all pointless and other people might call it senseless, I feel as if I am learning about a side of her that I never knew.
I pry open the golden locket around my neck and stuff the damp moss inside of it.
I don’t have a clue what it means, but I need to get on my way before I find the company of anyone else who is wandering the woods this late.
“Thank you,” I whisper down the burrow before lifting up my skirts and making my way back through the trees.