Chapter 3
GRIPPING THE BANISTER, I take the first step, hips and knees groaning. I worked too hard in the garden this morning.
Before I can take the next one, Lowen rushes in to help, slipping an arm around my waist and half carrying me up the stairs. Up here are my bedroom and the room he used to share with the rest of our brothers but now has to himself. Halfway up, he murmurs, “Are you all right?”
I try to answer, but between focusing on the staircase and wrestling my emotions, I can’t form words.
Below, there’s the sound of Annem and Pa having a low conversation, then the back door opening and closing.
Lowen helps me to bed and pulls up the blankets, frowning. “Why didn’t you want to know which one of them did it?”
I shake my head, swallow down the residue of my hurt and anger that are still trying to burst from me like smoke caught in a blocked chimney. “Because it doesn’t matter. Whichever one it was, they were protecting me from false hope. I can’t be angry with them for it.”
Can’t.
Shouldn’t.
I shrug and try a half smile that I hope reassures him. “And even if I was, it’s not like I’m going to… I don’t know… punish them? It’s like Annem says—blood is thicker than water. Or, in this case, ink.”
That pained look covers his face again, though his shoulders ease a little lower. “Is it, though?”
“Well, it’s keeping you here…” The guilt twists inside me, rawness upon rawness.
I want to tell him to leave—to live. But those words are impossible.
Not yet, at least. “When you should be heading to the pub, I mean.” There, that’s easier.
And, even better, I seize on a change of subject: “Oh, do you have those herbs I gave you?”
He grumbles, patting his pocket as he stands. “I do. Just… maybe look after yourself as well as everyone else, eh?”
“Look, see? Medicine.” I shake the little brown bottle I keep on the bedside table and drop the straw-colored tincture under my tongue.
Willow bark, valerian and evening primrose.
Bitter. Foul-tasting, to be honest. But I give him a grimacing smile as I return the bottle to its home and lie back. “I am looking after myself.”
I wave off his worries and ask him to put the window on the latch, so it’s not quite shut. The fresh air feels good, quenching the hot rush that swept through me earlier.
“Love you, Lowen,” I call as he reaches the door.
He pauses, turns, gaze on the floor. “I know why you always say that when you say goodbye.”
“Oh?” I say it lightly, but it is heavy.
“In case it’s your last chance. You want that to be the final thing you say to me.”
I swallow as the weight grows.
“But I’ve told you before…” His dark eyes snap up to meet mine, and the corner of his mouth twitches. “If Death comes for you, he’d better run, because I’m coming after you.”
I laugh and wave him off. “Poor Death doesn’t stand a chance. Now get to the pub or your friends will be worried about you.”
He grins and shuts the door after him, calling through it, “Love you too, Annon.”
That’s when the tincture catches up with me, making my weary body sink into the mattress as I take deep breaths of the green, floral scent of herbs drying in the rafters. The dimming light cradles me as I drift deeper and deeper inside, somewhere between sleep and the waking world.
“… there are better ways than that.” Annem’s voice floats along the same currents I drift through.
My body feels far away, but maybe I frown.
“Do you want her to find out? It will ruin everything.” That stern voice from my Pa again. Strange to hear him like that when he’s usually so softly spoken.
“It’s her gift. I’m not so sure—”
“You agreed to this,” he cuts her off.
My birthday gift. What have they bought me? Has Annem changed her mind, worried it cost too much? I can sell more of my tinctures and teas. It will be all right, I want to tell her.
“It’s too late to change things,” he goes on, sounding more and more distant with each word. “It’s too late, no matter what we might…”
The thread of the conversation unravels as I spill over into a deep, dark sleep.
I’m in my room. I never normally dream of places I know in real life, but here we are.
Through the window, I see the garden, but it’s etched in scratchy lines of gray and black, like the images in my borrowed books, but the lines flicker and twitch, unreal. At the wall stands a familiar figure.
I can’t move. My heart clamors in my chest. There is no space for breath. Cold closes in.
The moonlight hits his back, making him a darker silhouette in the dark landscape. A slate-colored sea twitches behind him, the waves moving in unnatural rhythms.
Slowly, slowly, like ice carving a mountain, he lifts his head. In the shadows of his face, his eyes glow with preternatural light.
Just as that unnerving gaze meets mine, there’s a shriek, and a pale shape crashes into the window. A dark voice speaks right in my ear.
“Wake up.”
I jolt awake, clutching my chest where my heart pounds like I’ve just taken belladonna. A scraping sound at the window has me turning, expecting to find an owl scratching at the glass.
But there’s nothing, just my window swinging, blown off the latch.
I catch my breath, blinking in the dim light that creeps in from outside.
An owl’s screeches must’ve woken me.
But when my breaths die down, I can hear something in the garden. Movement. Scrabbling.
I pad out of bed, joints looser thanks to the tincture I’ve taken, and go to the window. Dawn threatens in the east, giving me a little light to see by.
A dark shape bends over the wall.
Death. The sight grips me, so I can only stare at the form inside the garden facing out to sea. The figure straightens and I recognize the set of his shoulders. Lowen.
“Bloody hells,” I sigh, shaking my head. What the fuck is he doing? I peer through the open window, a chill wind nipping at my cheeks. He bends over the wall again. Must be throwing up.
“How much have you drunk?” I mutter as I shut the window. He’s going to wake Annem and Pa at this rate. I grab my dressing gown and slide on my slippers, then as I turn to the door, movement snags on the edge of my vision. A fluttering darkness.
For half a second, I think an owl has actually flown into my room. But, propped up on the side, the mirror looks back at me, empty. Its scattered reflections take a moment to still. As I turned, I must’ve seen my own reflection, rendered strange by its odd surface.
Shaking my head, I hurry downstairs as quickly as I can. I consider grabbing something to help settle Lowen’s stomach, but I need to get him inside first, then I can assess just how bad he is and the best course of treatment.
The chill wind nearly tears the back door from my grasp as I make my way outside. It bites through my nightclothes and slippers, making me grit my teeth.
“Lowen Archer, you nearly gave me a bloody heart attack.”
It sounds like he’s stopped vomiting, at least. He bends over the wall, arms and shoulders moving like he’s doing… something.
As I draw closer, I catch him muttering but the words are lost on the wind.
“Come on, let’s get you inside.”
He turns, and I hold out my arms ready to help, but instead of coming toward me, he tosses something on the ground. Thud.
In the darkness, I have to squint at the thing that lands alongside still more dark shapes.
Ignoring me, Lowen turns his back and bends over the wall again. This time he tosses two objects to the side, which clack into the pile he’s created.
Stones. From the wall.
“Lowen? What’re you doing?” I come up beside him.
“Pull it apart,” he mutters without looking at me, fingers scrabbling into the wall. “Let me in.”
As he turns and tosses the stone to one side, I catch sight of the gouge he’s torn through the wall. Swearing softly, I realize he must’ve been here a while—he’s pulled a section down to knee height.
“Lowen. Hey.” I touch his shoulder, but it makes no difference.
“You’re sleepwalking. Come on. Let’s go inside, eh?
” At least I hope that’s all this is. What if he has a fever or some other delirium?
My illness isn’t contagious, but if he has the same thing and it’s just taken longer to show in him…
No. Logic. This behavior isn’t one of my symptoms. He’s gone out drinking, then he’s come home, gone to sleep, and drink has taken him from bed to do whatever this is. We can fix the wall in the morning.
“Come on, little brother. Time to rest. Let’s—”
He whips around, eyes blank as he pushes his face into mine. “Wake up.”
I stumble back, cold gnawing on my bones at hearing the words from my dream.
He bends down and grabs at something in the wall. The scant light catches on metal. Long and thin—a wire that disappears beneath the stones. He strains, pulling on it, letting it bite into his fingers without even a whimper.
“No, don’t do—”
“Pull it apart.” His shoulders strain as he puts his body weight into it. Blood glistens, welling up around the cruel wire.
“Lowen.” I tug on his arm, but he’s immovable. There are tendons in his fingers—if he severs them… “Please! Stop!”
He doesn’t.
I search for something that can stop him hurting himself more. Pa’s hatchet glints on top of its log. I grab it, the weight unfamiliar, and wedge myself in next to my brother.
If I miss the wire and hit him…
I grit my teeth. Please, gods. Make my aim true. I raise the hatchet.
Damn it. His fingers are in the way.
“Come on, Lowen. Move over.” I nudge him, nodding like this is the greatest idea he’s ever had and I’m ever so keen to join in.
He doesn’t even look up.
“I’m helping.” Desperation roughens my voice. “Move over so I can help you cut the wire.”
He stills. His fingers unfurl, dark blood dripping on to gray stone.
I heave. The hatchet’s blade sparks on the stone. Two ends of wire ping back.
A peal of thunder shakes the air, the ground, my bones.
Lightning shatters the sky.
Thunder then lightning? No. That’s not possible.
I’m the daughter of a fisherman. I’ve grown up by the sea all my life. I know weather. Lightning then thunder. Always.
“Annon?” Hunched over the wall, Lowen blinks up at me, cradling his hands to his chest.
“You’re awake.” Huffing out my relief, I pat his cheek. “Let’s get inside and take a look at you, eh?” I smile in reassurance and nod, but the aftermath of that impossible thunder still rumbles along my nerves.
As he straightens, he frowns into the distance. “What’s that?”
On the horizon, I can barely make out a dark shape. It could be a cloud—it follows the cold wind battering the shore, except…
It moves faster than every other cloud in the sky.
And it’s coming straight toward us.