Chapter 26
éadha’s seat in the Records room was near one of the windows hewn into the cliff face. Outside, cormorants wheeled and dived into the sea below while light-winged terns arrowed past, dropping from their nests built far above on rocky outcrops.
The Channellers were taught to glory in waste, to burn away the power as soon as it coursed into them, shooting up into the wind, pushing against it as a thing to be defeated.
In her power, she was more kin to the birds than to them, éadha thought.
Kin to the young dragon who’d flown away on the world’s winds all those months ago.
Like them, her power was limited by her heart, by her strength, and so she flew within the wind, let it take her where it would, grateful for the impossible lightness of it, the brief absolution from the bonds that tied her to the earth.
As éadha sat staring out of the window, Head Keeper Maebh marched through the Record room, snapping to the junior Keepers to follow her as she moved toward the elevator.
éadha fell in at the back. These rounds were going to be particularly tense, as this was the day of the Midwinter Ball, the last and greatest of the winter parties.
Maebh was worried they might run low on power.
éadha was standing near a tower of bunks, listening to Maebh grumble over attrition rates when there was a soft thump.
A girl hardly older than éadha had slid from her bunk and lay unconscious on the floor beside her.
“What is it now?” snapped Maebh.
A Keeper bent to examine her. “A volunteer presentable, Head Keeper. Seems to be dehydrated and spent.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, that’s all we need. Apprentice Keeper, bring her up to the infirmary, tell the nurses we need her in shape for tonight or I’ll personally review their own files.”
éadha half lifted, half dragged the girl over to the elevator.
She was heartbreakingly slight, her thin, triangular face slack as éadha tried to avoid bumping her against the stony floor.
Once inside the elevator, éadha laid her down gently onto a trolley and leaned against the wall to get her breath back.
She knew the little face. She was one of the Fodder regularly sent up to the parties.
Young and with a shadow of prettiness about her emaciated frame, she counted as a presentable.
She was one of about ten girls of similar age most often sent up.
They’d no names down in the hold, but éadha had given them names of her own—this one she called Donn, brown, after her hair, which, even matted and lank, was still beautiful.
She lifted her hand, thinking she’d send a pulse of energy into her when Donn’s eyes snapped open.
“Don’t.”
éadha pulled her hand away in shock.
The girl sat up, swinging her legs down and swiftly loosening the trolley’s wooden sidebar; she jammed it into the gap between the wall and the elevator so it juddered to a halt. “That’ll give us a few minutes.”
“What are you doing?” asked éadha, now thoroughly bewildered.
The girl lay back on the trolley, spent. “If you give me much energy now, then the infirmary will spot it, and they might start asking questions.”
“You know?” asked éadha.
“Of course I know.”
“Do you all know?”
“Not all of us, but some; we have eyes for power and can see the threads,” said Donn.
She smiled grimly at éadha’s shocked face.
“Yes, it’s almost funny. A whole island full of learned Masters, a hold crawling with Keepers measuring us down to the last breath, and not one of you ever thinks to wonder what we can see.
Don’t worry, by the way—those of us who can see, we won’t say anything about what you’re doing. We’ll take it to the grave.”
“I’m so sorry,” whispered éadha.
“For what?” said the girl. “You’re one of the decent ones.”
“But how can you bear it every day, being used up like that?”
Donn stared at her levelly. “You have to break. That’s what gets whispered to every person their first night in a Fodder wagon, or a hold, or some Family Fodder Wing.
Accept this is how it is and let go of any ideas you had about yourself, any hopes you might’ve had.
That way lies madness, trying to hold on to some rope made of dreams or love, hoping you can climb up it and out, back onto the surface, back into your life.
You have to break, accept there’s no way out, no way around.
This is all there is for you now. Once you’re broken, you can learn how to just exist, that the only way is to go through it.
And then, if you do come out the other side, what you have is a husk that still walks, still breathes, that maybe one day you can fill up again with things that are worth something.
You’ll never be the person you were; you had to give that person up to survive.
But you might make a new person who’s just as worthy. ”
éadha stood, frozen, staring at Donn.
“Here,” said Donn, scrabbling beneath her thin robe and pulling out a package. “This is for you. A thank-you.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are those who hold back, quietly, gently. Trying to spare us within the limits of their ways. It’s like a whispered conversation that only we can hear, every night up there in the halls, the touch of those who refrain.”
éadha thought of Gry on First Island, telling her how there were always apprentices who tried, in their different ways, to minimize the harm they did while not being caught by the Masters.
“But you,” said Donn, “you shine. That’s what we call you: Grianán, the shining one.
You have something none of us have seen before.
We see your light, the way you block the fair one’s spidery threads before they can suck us dry.
It gives us hope that maybe it doesn’t have to be like this, for always and forever.
“We know you’ve hidden yourself so they can’t see what’s inside you. But just for one night we can make you beautiful on the outside, even if they can’t see what lies within.”
éadha stared at the little package, the size of her hand.
“The power you leave us with, we have to use it up or the Keepers will detect it. So we cast about for something we could do. Some of us were seamstresses in our old lives, and I could steal bits and pieces from the students’ rooms when I’m called for private sessions.”
Seeing éadha’s distressed face, she lifted up a tired hand and patted éadha’s arm.
“Please, take this as it’s given: with joy, not sadness.
Being able to do something for another is, after all, the essence of living rather than merely existing.
It brought us back to ourselves, for a little while, to do this thing. ”
There was a sharp snap as the wood broke and the elevator juddered back into motion. éadha hid the package beneath her tunic. “What’s your name?” she asked quietly, staring ahead as she waited for the door to open.
“Seoda,” she murmured, closing her eyes. “Go, shine for us.”