Chapter 7
I find my wedding dress wadded up beneath a pile of dirty rags in the laundry lean-to. It occurs to me that while Misia Tzu may be twice my age, she has the disposition of a child. One who’s dangerous and well-armed, but immature, nonetheless.
I grab my garment and shake it out, but it’s no use.
It stinks like mildew. I add this latest seed of anger to the growing pile before pulling on the wrinkled gown.
When I step outside onto the village’s cobblestone paths, I inhale deeply of the smoky air, noticing a sharp green edge to the scent.
The Foresters must be burning recently cleared foliage.
My red dress stands out like a beacon in the misty, leaden day. Thankfully, those who work outdoors are already at their tasks: Farmers finishing their fall reaping, Guardians on patrol, Carpenters shoring up the Valley’s aging structures.
I hurry toward my old home, my plan to change my clothes as quickly as possible before visiting the Record Keeper cottage.
My hard-soled shoes echo on the cobblestones, just as they did yesterday.
Through a window, I spot the Baker’s daughter up to her elbows in flour.
Before my conscious brain can counter the habit, I think to bring home a currant tart for Jonas, and an arrow of grief pierces my heart.
Only a handful of others join me on the narrow stone path winding through our thatch-roofed village, and all of them quickly glance away. I don’t think it’s the dress or even the odor.
They know I’m Jonas’s sister.
It hurts when they avoid eye contact, but then I remember I did the same to those who lost family to the Harvest before me.
My own suffering is momentarily replaced by shame, hot in my belly.
Moving forward, I’ll be better. For now, all I can do is keep my head down and hurry to the Apothecary cottage.
…Where I stand, still as an oak, outside what used to be my door.
Do I walk in, or knock like a villager would?
I would’ve stood there until I really did sprout roots if I hadn’t caught the sound of an argument inside.
I recognize Gran’s voice, stronger than it’s been in a while, but the angry male one is unfamiliar.
I rip open the door, prepared to defend my gran.
Only to find Augustus, head of the Plumber House, standing above her. His face is the same blank mask he wore over my mother’s body, and fear makes the ground tilt beneath me. Is he killing us off, one by one?
“Leave her alone!” I yell, lunging at him.
He sidesteps me easily. His beard is shot through with silver, his face weathered, but his arms and chest are corded with muscle from the carrying, pounding, and wrenching of his trade. “Watch yourself, girl,” he says in a voice as rough as rock.
“Watch yourself!” I respond, making fists of my hands. I have no idea how to fight, nor the consequences I’ll face if I do, but I’m prepared to find out before I’ll let someone hurt my gran.
Augustus snorts.
It’s Gran who answers. “It’s a misunderstanding, Rosie,” she says in her reedy voice. She sits in her favorite rocking chair before the crackling fire. Her gray hair is braided over her shoulder, and she has ash-colored yarn and timeworn knitting needles in her lap. “I’m fine.”
She seems to be speaking truth, but I can’t get my blood pressure down. My eyes flick back to Augustus, who’s still studying me.
“Are you in need of care?” I ask. Why else would he be here?
He snorts again. “Not any more than the next person.” He nods to Gran. “We’ll talk later,” he says, and makes to leave, stopping alongside me. In a voice audible only to me, he whispers, “Do you take the path of your mother?”
Frost crawls through my veins. I wish I knew how to defend myself, now that we have a murderer loose in the Valley. When I don’t respond, he expels a puff of air and leaves the cottage.
“Don’t mind him, Rosie,” Gran says, pulling my attention back to her. “He’s just upset.”
I’m trying to get my bearings. What just happened? “About what?”
“A bad deal that he made,” Gran says. “We will forget he was here.”
I want to protest, but I won’t argue with her. Even if she weren’t my elder, her fragile health means any stress could be dangerous. Gran’s illness isn’t treatable. It twists her bones and gnaws at her from the inside until she cannot keep down anything but broth.
“You’ve got some spirit in you today,” I say instead.
I try to hold a smile, but it’s too much.
Instead, my eyes drink in everything I’ve always taken for granted.
Gran’s savory sage tea bubbling on the stove, the stick family Jonas painted when he was four still pinned to the wall because Uncle Richard loves it so much, medicine bottles so plentiful that our kitchen shelves bow beneath their weight.
It’s everything good, and none of it belongs to me anymore.
Not even my gran, not according to Valley law.
“And you look like you slept standing up,” Gran quips.
But a cough racks her, and I know from experience that she’s putting on a brave face.
How long had Augustus been here, and what did it cost her to talk with him?
I rush to pour her a mug of tea, reaching for our—no, their—stash of honey to soothe her throat.
But when I peek inside the pot, it’s empty.
There’s been a shortage since the Vex evacuation forced the Beekeepers to close half their hives.
I pour hot water into the container to dissolve the last of the crystallized sweetness, swish it around, and tip the honeyed water into Gran’s cup.
I offer her the drink. “Are Aunt Florence and Uncle Richard making their rounds?”
“They are,” Gran says. “Decided it’s better to keep moving. It helps with the sorrow.”
She’s flirting with sacrilege. Joy and celebration are the only acceptable responses to a Harvest. She must be referring only to Mom’s murder. I stare at the fire, feeling none of its warmth. I know her gaze is on me, but I can’t think of what to say. Everything seems so settled. So final.
“Look at me, Rosie,” she says softly.
I turn. She holds out her arms, and I sink into them as gently as possible, accepting my first loving touch since Jonas was stolen from me.
But he was stolen from her, too, wasn’t he?
She’d lost her grandson and her daughter.
Yet her grip on me is strong, and she smells like home. I’m suddenly overcome by sobs.
“I’m not originally from the Apothecary House, you know,” she says minutes later, after my weeping has worked its way out.
I sniffle. I did not know. It’s considered rude to ask. I’m pretty sure Gran’s the one who taught me that to begin with. But if she’s opened the door… “Which one did you leave?”
She’d been stroking my hair, but her hand goes still, resting on the back of my head.
“Plumbing, if you can believe it. I’ve known Gus decades longer than you’ve been alive.
” I can hear the smile in her voice. “I can still fix a leaky pipe in the blink of an eye. Locate water in the sand. It’d be foolish to let a good talent go to waste, don’t you think? ”
A sharp jolt zips down my spine. If someone overheard her, she’d be whipped no matter how sick she is.
I feel guilty for allowing the conversation to proceed—surely Gran’s not in her right mind—but I’m unwilling to shut her down.
Besides, I’ve followed nearly every rule all my life, and it still didn’t protect my family.
“It was quite a shock to move here,” she continues, “after I wed your grandfather. All the blood and mucus I had to deal with. For the first weeks, I was throwing up more than our patients.” She chuckles softly.
“There were so many new rules to learn, so many new procedures. I was terrified. There’s no shame in that.
” She turns over her wrist, showing her tattoo to me. “I earned this.”
I’ve seen her Rod of Asclepius, the Apothecary House symbol, so many times that I consider it a part of her.
I trace the faded blue shape with my finger.
It’s a single snake wrapped around a staff.
We’re told it’s the symbol of an ancient medicine god hailing from a far-off land.
Healing. Wisdom. Sacrifice. That’s what it means to me, and I’d always hoped to have one inked on my own wrist someday.
Given the size of Nikola’s household relative to my own, I was supposed to.
Gran begins stroking my hair again. Her touch feels so good, so safe. “Did you know Reatha of the Chemist House?” she asks, seemingly at random.
“Of course,” I reply.
What happened to them was unprecedented.
The Chemist husband, Otto, a man with a great booming laugh, was honored with a Harvest last winter, leaving behind his wife, Reatha, and their kids, Albert and Marie.
Albert was only three years younger than me.
I knew him as quiet, maybe a little poky.
He’d gotten his work done and often Marina’s, too.
He had a monumental crush on the Record Keeper daughter.
Then came his horrific accident.
He’d been scurrying up a tree, a wooden slingshot tucked into the back of his pants. He meant to shoot down apples for Marina like he often did, climbing high to get her the reddest, sweetest fruits in the Valley. But this time his foot slipped and he fell, cracking his spine.
Jonas and I were first on the scene. We were able to save his life, but not his mobility.
The Engineer House constructed Albert a wheelchair, and we all cut back on our requests of the Chemists.
But Reatha must never have recovered because a month ago, she snuck into the Record Keeper cottage and stole our blessed tablet, loaded herself and the children into the basket, and self-Harvested.
It’s why the tablet is now kept by a Guardian House rather than the Record Keeper.
Reatha committed the worst crime we know. She stole from the Valley, deprived us of our vital Chemists. My own House relied on them to grow penicillin. Ever since, we’ve been without that life-changing medicine. I can never forgive her for that.
“Why do you bring up Reatha?” I bite out.
“She was friends with your mother,” Gran says, cocking an eyebrow at my tone, a sliver of her old brightness returning to her voice.
Friends. Gran told me once that the word used to mean more to the adults of the Valley.
Men and women across Houses spending time together in the evenings, taking walks, sharing stories.
She said the villagers used to hold a dinner swap, where two Houses were randomly paired, with one cooking for everyone the first night and the other the next, so everyone got to know their neighbors.
The village used to act like a family, she said.
I have only faint memories of that time.
“Your mother and I did you a disservice by holding on so tight, Rosie,” Gran continues, shocking me with her admission. “We thought we were protecting you, and you’re such a natural healer, so gifted, that it was easy to keep you busy. But we all need people. Life’s too heavy to bear alone.”
I’m too embarrassed to tell her that I have no friends because everyone thinks I’m a rule-worshipping snitch, not because she loved me too much.
Most Noah’s Valley teens bend a rule here or there, just as Jonas did, tasting curse words and pushing curfews.
Not me. My rigidity has always stood out like a goat in chapel.
If I’m being honest, a part of me was excited at the Council’s recent advisory against mingling. It meant Jonas was home more.
But Gran has been speaking out against the system for too long. I’m about to warn her that she needs to be careful when the front door slams open.