Chapter 29 Secrets Upon Secrets Upon Secrets
Secrets Upon Secrets Upon Secrets
Yvlle rarely meant to walk down the pathway of the Grove of Ancestors, but somehow she almost always ended up there. Slung over her shoulder, the satchel of perfume vials jangled angrily. Despite being carefully sealed off, she imagined she could still smell that frost-blue vial …
Yvlle was not given to fanciful imaginings. That was the provenance of her brother. But when she thought of that blue vial, she thought that if dreams could possess a fragrance then it would smell like whatever was in that blue vial.
Night painted a sinister pall on the trees. Come find me, come find me, they seemed to say. Perhaps they missed her, she mused.
Nearly every night since she was fourteen, Yvlle had walked and walked and walked through the Grove of Ancestors.
She had gone as far back as Ongus “The Half an Hour” King and Yessemina, whose tomb of glass was rumored to reflect the face of one’s true love.
Yvlle had found this to be a downright lie, for when she had stood before it, she saw nothing but frost.
But she had never found her most famous ancestor, Enzo the Fool.
Nor had she ever found any sign of the sea witch who had loved him and cursed him and doomed her descendants.
There was a rumor that if one could only find Enzo, then he would grant them a boon.
For as long as she had known about the curse, Yvlle knew exactly what she would ask for …
Yvlle had walked through the woods until she had run out of food, of water, of strength.
She had walked until her feet blistered and her head swam.
She walked until she was certain that weeks, if not more, had passed in Rathe Castle.
But always, always, she was forced to give up her search.
The moment she turned, she was once more at the entrance of the Grove of Ancestors, all the miles she had crossed vanishing in a mere blink.
The hours she had been gone turned out to be mere minutes.
Sometimes she wondered if the Grove took pity on her, for all her cuts and bruises tended to disappear no matter what she had endured trying to find Enzo.
All that remained was an intense fatigue that seemed to go straight to her bones.
But it was an exhaustion that was invisible to everyone but her.
Yvlle was not one to admit defeat, but even she had to acknowledge that she had run out of time. Perhaps, however, she was more like her brother than she would ever admit. For even though she had run out of time, she had not run out of hope.
Hope was the only reason why she agreed to try and match these infernal fragrances to their contestants. Though how she would do that, Yvlle wasn’t sure. Maybe she could bribe the guardian of the vines …
Frankly, it would be a great deal easier if she could ask the contestants up front, but at this hour, who in the world would be awake—
“You have got to be joking.”
Standing in Yvlle’s path was Talvi. The Aatosian ice doll was clutching a book to her chest and wearing a long dressing gown over a nightdress that Yvlle thought was ridiculously short.
“How do you manage to procure clothes that are literally made for dolls?”
Talvi remained nonplussed.
“What are you doing skulking about at night? As a necromancer, I assumed you already had a wall of corpses ready for your reanimation experiments.”
“I do,” said Yvlle. “But one could always use more.”
Both of these things were true. But the corpses of the Isle of Malys were odd.
The bodies of those who chose not to live a second life as a rock or tree or whatever other piece of nature were little more than palimpsests.
There was a time when Yvlle thought that if she was able to dig up the oldest body on the Isle then she might find the answers she sought about Enzo the Fool’s final resting place or the unknown whereabouts of the witch he married.
But corpses weren’t much for conversation.
A miller who had been beheaded during a magic show gone terribly wrong was only capable of mumbling about “bread burnt in the oven!” and after a week of this, Yvlle sewed his lips shut.
An apothecary’s daughter who died of a broken heart spent days writing the same words over and over again: have you forgotten me, have you forgotten me, have you forgotten me.
Reanimating a corpse for information on their life was not a way to get answers, though they provided very useful and otherwise hard to find ingredients for darker magics.
Contrary to Talvi’s opinion, however, Yvlle rarely had to skulk about in the night for a body.
The coastline of the Famishing was deadly enough that walking it once or twice in the summertime—which is when the squalls were the deadliest—gave her enough supplies for a year.
“Don’t fret, little doll, you are not what I’m looking for,” said Yvlle.
“You certainly are not what I’m looking for either,” said Talvi.
Yvlle tilted her head. “What were you looking for?”
“I hardly see how that’s your business.”
It was said amongst her family that Yvlle spent too much time with the undead and that was why she had no idea how to speak to the living.
This couldn’t be further from the truth; it was simply that so often the living were more predictable than the dead.
Their wants, needs, aches, wounds … all of it had always seemed the same.
Yvlle knew that Talvi was no different. But Talvi kept saying things that were unexpected. When Yvlle thought she would act one way, she did the exact opposite. Against her will, Yvlle felt equal parts annoyance … and intrigue.
“Tsk tsk,” said Yvlle, walking closer. She let her shadows unfurl about her.
Her hair was brushed back from her forehead, and this evening, her eye was sitting on a shelf in the office of a sylke merchant suspected of insider trading.
She wore no eye patch and she knew her socket was a ghastly, red thing …
But Talvi did not flinch.
“I don’t take lightly to impertinence,” said Yvlle.
“Well, if we are to be family one day, then you might as well get familiar with my impertinence,” said Talvi.
The words grated. Yvlle felt the satchel of fragrances against her back. Speaking like this to Talvi was unwise.
“This is my land, therefore everything is my business,” said Yvlle. “What were you doing?”
Talvi sighed. “If you must know, I was searching for inspiration.” She added theatrically: “I even looked upon Wrate’s eye and begged him to reveal all that was my unspoken dream!”
“And?”
“And then you, very inconveniently I might add, appeared,” said Talvi. “Like you always do.”
A strange little thrill crept down Yvlle’s spine.
She ignored it.
“And why would you ask inspiration here of all places?” asked Yvlle. “Do you know where you are?”
“The Grove of Ancestors,” said Talvi, strumming her fingers along the spine of the massive journal she was always carrying with her. “As you know, I’ve always been rather curious about your ancestor—”
“Enzo?”
“No,” said Talvi with a sad smile. “His consort. The one whose name is lost …
“My mothers always said that the ones who are lost are the loudest to speak to us … they speak to us in the wind, the rain, the poetry of clouds,” said Talvi. “But your ancestress doesn’t speak, and for the longest time I’ve wondered if it is not that she cannot speak … but that she refuses.”
Talvi looked embarrassed by her own enthusiasm for a moment, but then she shook it off.
“You must be wondering why I’m even fascinated at all, but I’m a made thing, you understand. Until my mothers breathed their lives into me, I was inert. Nothing but ice.” Talvi’s blue gaze flicked up to meet Yvlle’s. “A doll, as you say.”
Yvlle’s face betrayed no reaction, but she was grateful for the cover of dark.
“My mothers woke me,” said Talvi. “I suppose I’m hoping that if I imagine hard enough … if I concoct a story so outlandishly off base, then perhaps the sea witch will wake up … perhaps she’ll be annoyed enough by my conjecture that she might speak. As I was made to speak.”
“Why?” asked Yvlle.
Talvi shrugged. “I’ve never had a satisfying answer for that, I’m afraid.
Some days I think it’s scholarly interest. Other times I think it’s pity for Enzo’s spurned consort …
though mostly I suppose it is just hope?
I often have nightmares of what would have happened had my mothers never spoke me into life; if perhaps they decided they did not need a daughter for their life to feel complete …
would all the little particles that make up me still find a way to live?
Does life get summoned out of the ether, or is it already there, waiting to be gleaned into shape? ”
“Does it matter?”
“No,” said Talvi. “But I suppose it makes my life—me—feel real. There are times…” Talvi hesitated, clutching the book tighter, “… times where I feel that I might melt away and be nothing more than a puddle of water … that I’m not even here.
And I suppose knowing would make me feel more real … less like a doll.”
Yvlle felt an irritating pang of regret, followed by a brief and vivid image of a snow sculpture Talvi—pale arms lifted to the sky, silver hair thick with frost, her smile glassy and lifeless.
And the ache that followed after was far more painful than the regret.
What if Talvi had not existed? What if they’d never met?
“What are you doing?” asked Talvi.
Belatedly, Yvlle realized that she had moved closer to the other girl. She could not stop. An inexorable force pulled her forward and Yvlle, who would have fought the sun’s rising simply to be contrarian, allowed herself to be moved.
“What I’ve been meaning to do since the first time I saw you,” said Yvlle. “Make certain that you are real.”
Talvi’s face was alight with quiet wonder as she held up her hand. Yvlle closed the space between them with a touch. Her hand pressed to Talvi’s. Their fingers interlocked as if they could snare this single moment between their palms.
Talvi took a shuddering breath. “When I’m around you—”
But whatever Talvi was going to say would remain a mystery. At that second, the perfume vials in Yvlle’s satchel clanged together. Talvi withdrew her hand, her gaze darting to the dark bag.
“What is that?”
Yvlle cursed silently. Or perhaps she should have uttered a blessing. The sound of the perfume vials rattled her. The tournament had not concluded and Talvi was very much a part of it, which begged the question of what in the world Yvlle was doing talking to her like this … touching her like that …
If a few more minutes had passed, Yvlle could not be certain what else she might have tried to prove to Talvi that she was real. Yvlle cleared her throat and dropped the bag onto the ground.
“A mystery,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’d help me?”
A smile flickered on Talvi’s face.
“An hour ago, nothing short of drowning might have compelled me to help you … and even then, I’m not entirely certain I wouldn’t have thrown you a boulder.”
“Charming,” said Yvlle.
“But now…”
“Now?” Yvlle prompted.
“Now I might feel persuaded to help,” said Talvi.
Talvi touched her palm lightly, as if Yvlle’s touch still lingered on her skin. Yvlle smiled to herself as she took out the vials one by one and arranged them on the ground. The green apple, the golden heart, the icicle, the glass bubble, the topaz rose and the gray river stone.
“The fragrances,” said Talvi, surprised.
“Yes,” said Yvlle. “Whose is whose?”
“The ozorald vial belongs to Ursula, the topaz one is Edmea’s, the glass bubble is Cordelia’s and the heart is Zoraya’s,” said Talvi, frowning. “That one’s mine.”
Talvi pointed to the blue icicle. Yvlle loosed a breath. Not her, she thought, embarrassed by her own relief. It’s not her.
“Then who would this belong to?” asked Yvlle, lifting up the gray river stone.
“Only the contestants could create a fragrance at that table,” said Talvi. “It’s odd, she was so determined not to make one, but I guess she changed her mind.”
“Who?” asked Yvlle.
“Demelza, of course.”