Chapter 11
I exhale slowly.
I don’t know what’s happening, but if this person really is searching the lab, then I can’t sit here waiting to be discovered.
With quiet, measured movements, I lift my suitcase and creep toward one of the retractable, ground-level windows that encircle the greenhouse.
I open a pane slowly, wincing at the faint squeak of the glass.
I shove my suitcase and myself outside and breathe a sigh of cool air and relief when I’m not followed.
Closing the window as silently as I can, I sneak away, hurrying to the Record Keeper cottage. Marina answers the door, bundling me into her arms as soon as she lays eyes on me. The affection is unsettling. She’s only ever paid attention to mock me.
“How are you?” she asks, releasing me to look me up and down.
Her blue eyes, startling against the pale cream of her skin, bore into me.
“Do you know I was the last person to talk to your mother? I’ve been telling everyone how awful I feel!
But a child of the Tanner House looked off-color to me, and I was so sure it was the Vex.
I went to inform Henrietta and Jonas exactly as procedure dictates, and you know the rest.”
Well. I guess that puts to rest the question of whether or not she killed my mother or knew who had. “Uncle Richard says it wasn’t the Vex.”
She shrugs dismissively. “Turned out the child suffers from allergies.”
Anatol, then. Thirteen years old, allergic to stone fruits and pollen…
neither of which would give him a sickly pallor.
Had his stomach been upset? Before I can ask more, Marina tugs me into her cottage.
I need to focus on getting inside the vault, so I force my Apothecary training to quiet.
I’m sure my prior family will follow up on Anatol’s condition.
I enter Marina’s home. The interior looks like every other village house I’ve visited.
The only difference is its size. This house is connected to the communal library, and beneath that lies one of only two cellars in the village.
The Record Keeper basement is for preserving our history, the other for gatherings after chapel, just as the Founders intended.
While I’ve visited the library many times, I’ve never been to this side of the cottage, the living side, not even to set David’s foot last week.
We prefer to treat broken bones at the site of injury, but David had been hauled to the Apothecary cottage by a pair of stone-faced Guardians, his foot crushed in one of their animal traps, they’d said.
He’d been in too much pain to speak. I requested he stay for observation after I set his bones, but the Guardians carried him home against my advice.
Marina guides me to the couch before dropping into a plush chair across from me. She leans forward expectantly, throwing me off an already shaky guard. “How are you? Tell me everything.”
“I-I’m actually here to talk to you about Jonas. Is that all right?”
She nods, but she’s staring off into the distance. That’s when I realize: she’s also lost Jonas. Now that he’s gone, she’s a Caster. Unless a wife in our cycle is Harvested or dies, Marina will never have her own wedding night. Out of instinct, I grab her hand. She flinches but doesn’t pull away.
“He was telling me a story on the way to the wedding,” I continue. “He said he saw something. He was about to tell me what, but then…then…you know. It’s probably nothing, but I’d feel better if I made sure.”
“What did he say he saw?” Marina asks absently.
“Something in the vault.”
Suddenly, I have her full attention. “That can’t be right.
Only Record Keepers are allowed down there, and besides,” she says, a spark returning to her eye, “Jonas wasn’t even here yesterday.
Simon was busy prepping new census forms. It’s time for an update, what with all the weddings and Harvests. ”
My brow furrows. Jonas had been clear that he’d stopped by yesterday morning. I can’t believe Marina would lie to my face like that. Actually…I can. “Is Simon around?” I glance toward the stairs leading to the second story.
“He isn’t, but I’ll tell him you called.” She stands abruptly.
I rise, too, a polite reflex.
With a tight smile, she grabs my elbow and steers me toward the exit.
I barely catch the handle of my suitcase as she hurries me along.
I’m being dismissed, though I can’t fathom why.
Perhaps Marina can only muster up a few minutes of civility per day.
I ought to thank her for spending them on me for once.
In the open doorway, she drops my arm and then her eyes. When she drags them back to my face, the dark blue of her irises swirls toward black. She lowers her voice and leans forward. “The records say it’s possible to survive out there, you know.”
I’m not sure I’ve heard her correctly. “What?” I ask, my body suddenly rooted in place.
Marina makes a show of looking around. We’re alone. “It’s in an older text, one you must be a Record Keeper to read. It speculates that some who are Harvested could potentially live on top of the Wall.”
“For an hour or two.” My tongue feels clumsy and swollen. “Maybe a day.”
“No, I mean survive forever.” She glances over my shoulder and up, presumably at the Wall. Then she touches my wrist, briefly. “I’m not supposed to tell, but…we were almost sisters.”
I open and close my mouth, words failing me.
“Maybe Jonas is up there.” A smile cuts across her face. “Waiting for you to help him get down.” In one fluid movement, Marina shoves me into the crisp autumn air and slams the door in my face.
I stand there, reeling. I truly do not understand that girl.
When my senses return, they ride on the back of a lullaby, the one Gran had been humming right before I stepped into the Apothecary lab to say goodbye.
It’s a song she put Jonas and me to sleep with when we were children, a tune everyone in the village knows. A verse comes back to me.
We live by the Wall, Water, Soil, and Sun.
In Noah’s Valley, each to a House yet one.
So sing me a story, dear, I’m down on my knees,
Praying to Heaven, bring me back, please.