Chapter 9 Penny
Penny
The next morning, we dressed and went downstairs for a breakfast of hot porridge with honey and mugs full of milk.
I gulped mine greedily down, but Kit’s appetite was still flagging.
He pushed his bowl aside and spent most of the meal holding my hand on top of the table, weaving his fingers between mine.
We didn’t talk about the nightmare, or anything that came after it, and that was fine with me. Everything that needed to be said was clear in Kit’s eyes every time he smiled at me.
After we ate, Kit settled our tab and sent me to the room to fetch our belongings.
I brought our packs down while he pulled the cart around outside.
After loading the bags alongside the bales of hay he’d purchased from the innkeeper, I climbed in after them, but Kit called to me from the driver’s seat.
“There’s room up here for two, you know.” He patted the wide wooden bench beside him and flashed a grin. “Unless you’re going to sleep another day away.”
With my sketchbook and pencil in hand, I climbed over the backboard and sidled up to him.
We’d barely made it out of town before Kit draped his arm across my shoulders and pulled me close.
I sighed, content, and laid my head against him.
We spent the next several hours talking about my life on the farm without a single mention of Merrick.
But I had plenty of stories about Father, Mother, and Sayla, a few of which had Kit and I laughing until another coughing fit forced me into quiet.
I enjoyed riding beside Kit but kept dozing off and waking with his hand on my forehead, checking my temperature, or pulling me upright. So, when we stopped for lunch, I moved to the bed of the cart and curled up in the hay between the small wooden crates.
It was dusk when I woke again, and my chest felt so constricted that every breath creaked in and out. Kit crouched overhead, brushing hair off my face and watching me with unmasked concern.
Sitting up brought a wave of dizziness that almost knocked me back flat.
I took hold of the side of the cart and steadied myself, then blinked blearily at the scene around us.
Barren trees comprised dense woods on three sides, their branches stretching across a painted sky.
Peering past the horse stopped out in front, tall yellow grass nearly obscured rows of scattered headstones.
The markers were weather worn, cracked, and crumbling.
I’d seen the graveyard in Eastcliff as a child when we buried my grandmother.
She was one of the last I knew of to be interred before the threat of the Bone Men brought an end to old traditions.
Thinking about it now, I wasn’t sure what happened to her.
Did my father go back to rescue her bones and burn them?
Or had her final resting place been disturbed by ne’er do wells like us?
When I finally looked at Kit, I found his eyes ringed with shadows and his face pale.
“You okay?” I asked him.
“That’s something I should be asking you.”
“I’m pretty sure you have, and that I’ve answered,” I replied. “It sounds familiar.”
He brushed his hand across my cheek, and I tipped my head to rest in his palm.
“Tell me again,” he said.
I smiled. “I’m all right. You worry too much.”
When Kit pulled away, I craned my neck around to search the overgrown graveyard again. I’d been avoiding this reality, sleeping and daydreaming my way to this point, unwilling to acknowledge what this next task would require.
Grave robbing changed my life. I still wasn’t sure my family wasn’t cursed. Sayla and I schemed, and I sought out Kit, then joined the Bone Men for the sake of preventing such crimes. I never wanted to take part in them.
“How do we know which ones still have people inside?” I wondered aloud.
Kit drew to his full height, taking me by the hand and elbow and heaving me up too. “It’s a bit of guesswork,” he said. “But as far as I know, I’m the only person who knows about this place, and I marked my trail.”
I followed him to the end of the wagon, where he hopped off onto the ground and then offered me a hand down.
Once my feet hit the packed dirt beside Kit, I looked over at him. “You’ve taken bodies before?” I asked. “I thought you didn’t make it past the first Oath.”
I talked so much about myself and my life that I imagined Kit knew practically everything about me.
But when it came to himself, Kit offered little, and it never felt right to ask.
I’d learned more from his father’s records than I had from Kit himself.
The subject of his past always brought sobriety and guilt, neither of which I wanted for him.
Kit stepped around me to reach into the cart. Along with the hay and crates of supplies, we had a pair of shovels, and he dragged one of them out.
“My father demanded it.” His mouth pinched in a frown. “He thought it would bring me closer to Eeus and better prepare me for my initiation. I was too soft as far as he was concerned, so he figured digging up bodies would make me tougher. I helped him when I was young, too.”
“He sounds like Merrick,” I muttered.
I’d done it again, broached the forbidden topic. I sighed and scrubbed a hand through my hair. “I’m really not good at not talking about him, am I?”
Kit shook his head.
The silence grew as I considered what to say next. I was wrong to think Kit was anything like my brother, and it must have hurt him to hear it. I might as well have said he was like his father, whom he understandably despised.
“I’m sorry he tried to change you,” I said at last.
Kit sank the shovel’s curved tip in the ground and leaned against it, looking down at the dirt as he answered, “He did change me.”
For that, I had no reply.
The evening light waned as Kit wandered the small cemetery in a pattern I couldn’t discern.
I trailed behind him, dragging the second shovel over the grass and leaving behind a circuitous path.
He stooped and studied a few of the worn headstones before coming to a stop in front of one.
They were all aged, marking the resting place of old bodies who had likely been forgotten in the passage of time.
I wondered if that knowledge soothed Kit’s guilt as he turned to me.
“I’ll get started. Get the lantern from the cart, won’t you?”
Shuffling back to the wagon, I retrieved the oil lamp from its hook beside the driver’s seat. The flame was meager, and I doubted its ability to combat the oncoming night, but it would be a risk to steal away with a corpse in broad daylight.
I returned to Kit’s side and set the lantern beside the displaced dirt already piling up. A bout of coughs raked up my sore throat and doubled me over. When I caught my breath and straightened, Kit had paused work to watch with an uneasy expression.
“Tell me again,” he said as I wiped my mouth on my sleeve.
“I’m fine, Kit.”
He shook his head. “Why don’t you rest a while longer?” It sounded more like a suggestion than a question. “I’ll let you know when I need to take a break.”
“I’ve had plenty of rest,” I protested. “And the work will go faster with two people.” When I bent to grab my shovel, Kit stepped on the handle and pinned it to the ground.
I frowned at him.
“I’ll dig,” he said. “You hold the light.”
It was slow work. Kit struggled and grunted through the labor while I reluctantly observed. The few times I went for my shovel again, I was met with a look of warning that drove me to sitting on the cold ground and shivering.
I tried not to think about how wrong it all was. Tried to pretend I wasn’t ultimately to blame for forcing Kit to revisit these horrors, and that the stains they would leave on our souls would wash out in time.
When Kit stopped and bent back, stretching out what I imagined to be stiff, sore muscles, I peered into the hole. It was a few feet deep now, but there was much more to go. His hand shook as he swiped it across his forehead, speckled with sweat despite the frosty air whipping around us.
Shoving to my feet found my legs nearly numb, but I forced them to move anyway. I left the lantern on the ground and grabbed the extra shovel before Kit could say a word. He stared at me, mouth open and protest ready as I jumped down into the grave beside him.
“I’m done just holding the light,” I said, meeting his eyes sternly. “This is supposed to be done together, not alone.”
Kit’s chest heaved with ragged breaths; he looked even more exhausted up close. Still, he shook his head as he sank his shovel into the packed dirt and leaned against it.
“You’re not well,” he said gruffly.
“Neither are you!” I jabbed a finger at him. “Did you sleep a single, uninterrupted hour last night?”
I’d never known him to rest well. The few nights I tiptoed through the living room of the cottage in the wee hours, I saw him on the couch tossing and turning.
The last two evenings spent sharing rooms at inns, I’d witnessed his nightmares.
They left him squirming and sweating, occasionally crying out and rousing us both.
I set my stance, tightening my grip on the shovel’s handle. “Don’t try to pretend you’re fine,” I continued. “You’ve hardly eaten in days. You so much as look at food, and I’m just waiting for you to vomit.”
I didn’t point out that he’d also spent most of our journey doting on me, unable to rest or to trade off driving the cart while I was sucked into sleep for endless hours. I was tired now, too, and my chest strained through hoarse inhales. But I wouldn’t let him continue without help.
Kit sighed. “I managed like this for years before I left Ashpoint. I know my limits, and I’ll be fine. I’m not the one we should be worrying about.”
“Well, I am worried!” I exclaimed.
A cough shook me, and I clenched my teeth to hold back more. I didn’t need to give him evidence of my weakness. I knew my limits, too, but I could push them for this. For Kit.
My throat was raw, and my swallow failed to soothe it before I continued in a softer, more earnest voice.
“Kit, I don’t know where I am. I’ve never left home for this long, or gone this far.
” The confession tumbled out. Things I was reluctant to tell him because I asked for this, and he was so prone to blame himself for every bad thing.
I never told him this whole endeavor was Sayla’s idea.
She had always been bolder than me. As much as I wanted to venture out and see the world beyond Eastcliff’s borders, I likely would have never left if not for my sister’s prompting.
I would have stayed on the farm I didn’t want, doing work I was no good at, languishing behind a plow for the rest of my life.
Kit helped me escape that. He made me brave. But he was weak, too, worn thin, and if something happened to him now, so far from everything and everyone I knew, I wasn’t sure I could manage by myself.
“Without you, I’m alone out here, and that frightens me,” I admitted, and Kit’s stern look softened. “Please take care of yourself. Or let me.”
I thought I’d persuaded him until he gave his head another swift, decisive shake. “It’s my job to protect you, not the other way around, Pen.”
My nostrils flared through a sharp breath that was immediately chased by a cough. I cleared my throat loudly, then snapped, “Who made it your job? Certainly not me. I didn’t ask to be your responsibility. We should be partners in this. Equals.”
Before I finished speaking, Kit had a rebuttal at the ready. “Partners, yes. Equals, no.”
I hardly knew what I was doing before I flung my shovel down, then grabbed Kit’s as well, hurling it into the dirt. Kit’s previously steadfast expression washed blank as I squared myself with him.
He sounded like Merrick, like he had when we first met.
Dismissive and bordering on degrading. Reminding me of my shortcomings as though I didn’t know them well enough.
He’d spent so much time telling me I deserved better that I’d started overlooking the obvious gaps between us.
I was younger, inexperienced, and impulsive.
I relied on him more than I should have, hapless in the wide-open world, weaker than I ever wanted to be.
“Don’t be like them,” I said, my voice gritty.
“You told me you weren’t like them.” My nose wrinkled through a sneer as I took on a mocking tone, imitating the voices I’d heard so much in my youth.
“Stay at the house, Penny. Help your mother, Penny.” I sucked a sharp, wheezing breath, trying to catch the air that escaped too rapidly.
“You’re in the way, Penny. Hold the lantern, Penny.
” On the last statement, I fixed him with a glare.
Tears clouded my eyes. “I don’t want to just hold the lantern, Kit. ”
By that point, we were nearly chest to chest. I was wheezing and fighting the swell of dizziness as my lungs screamed.
Kit reached out and took one of my fists in his dirt-caked hands, tethering me to the moment.
“That’s not how I meant it, Pen. Let me finish.
” He tried to work his fingers between mine, but I clenched them tighter.
“I’ve been through this,” he said. “I’ve done so much of it before, and if what they say about Eeus is actually true, I’m already damned.
You’re not. I know I can’t shield you from all of it, but some of it I can, and I intend to.
So no, I don’t want us to be equals in this.
The plan is and always was to take the brunt of it so you don’t have to. ”
Weariness crept in, and I couldn’t fight him for long.
By the time he finished, his fingers were interlaced with mine.
I didn’t respond or even meet Kit’s eyes before I slumped against him and looped my free arm around his neck.
My chest fluttered with ragged half-breaths as I crushed in close and pressed my face into Kit’s shoulder, muffling my next words.
“I don’t believe you’re damned. You’re too good to be damned.”
Kit wound an arm around my waist and pulled me tighter against him. “I’m not so sure that’s how it works.” He tipped his head against mine and pressed a kiss into my hair. “But I made peace with that a long time ago. So, let me do this for you, please. Let me protect you from whatever I can.”
When I pulled back to finally meet his eyes, I would have toppled over backward if he hadn’t held me. “Why?” I asked, the word coming out almost as a gasp. The night seemed darker somehow; shadows crowded the corners of my vision.
The look of alarm on Kit’s face was growing familiar. He really did worry too much.
“Breathe, Pen,” he said, pressing a palm to my chest. “Calm down and breathe.”
My knees went weak, and the rest of me quickly followed. The darkness grew, crowding out everything else. It was all I could do to steal enough air to mumble, “Am breathing,” before blackness swallowed the world.