Chapter Eleven
The Letters
When Caelan left for the morning hunt, he swore he’d have an answer for me by the time he returned. But whether or not that answer was Yes, I’d made up my mind. I was getting my cousin out of Stormsby.
Only, Sorcha was nowhere to be found the next morning.
I thought little of it at first — and perhaps that in itself was stupid.
Tanner was barely a few days in the ground, and the McAlpines had yet to even don their mourning wear.
Last night, Sorcha and I had had a swift, sobering conversation about the work to be done for Johnny’s wake before we’d parted ways for bed.
And then, unbeknownst to my cousin, of course, everything had changed while she slept.
If I hadn’t been looking for her, I would have assumed she’d risen early to get a head start on readying the tavern for the wake.
But the kitchen was empty; not even the giant pot of porridge on the stove, where Sorcha would always set it when she was the first to rise.
I swallowed against an oily little swirl of unease, and set about gathering the water and oats, flicking my fingers at the stovetop to light it with a spark of flame.
With the porridge on a low and sticky simmer, I opened the back door and peered out into the dim grey morning.
All was as I’d left it; the clothesline was bare, and the stable door was shut and bolted.
My heart slid into my throat as I shut the door and hurried once more from the kitchen.
I forced my steps to slow as I made my way upstairs, as though I could trick myself into staying calm; as though acknowledging any of the awful possibilities swirling in my skull would bring them to pass.
If I stayed calm, I imagined, I’d find Sorcha curled up in her bed, having slept in after our long day of consoling and caring for Ciara.
She was not in her bed.
But the bed was made, sheets tucked neatly beneath the pillows. If someone had taken her while she slept, I tried to tell myself, they would not have stopped to fix her bedding with one corner folded back invitingly – the way I’d taught her when she first arrived at The Mage and Rose.
But whatever part of my brain supplied that logic, it was clearly far removed from that primal part of me that operated on Flame and fear alone.
My descent from the attic was neither calm nor slow.
I half-tumbled down the stairs and tore through the small lobby to trip into the tavern with a great crash of the door against the wall.
Someone gave a small scream at my abrupt entrance, and I was so incredibly tense that the sound ripped my Flame forth, my fingertips set alight for a split second before I managed to stuff them behind my back.
Ciara took no notice of my flaming hands. She sat on a bar stool with a palm splayed to her chest, breathing hard. Her eyes were red and swollen, but wide with shock.
“Have you seen Sorcha?” I blurted.
“She’s out the front,” Ciara said, eyes still blown wide.
The air whooshed out of me, and I sagged forward, catching myself on my knees as I muttered a small prayer of thanks to the Dagda. When I straightened, Ciara was watching me with a soft, sad look of understanding.
“Scary times we live in,” she said quietly.
My heart sank; what a greeting I’d offered to this grieving daughter.
“Yes,” I said. And then; “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head.
“Don’t be sorry for looking after your family, Roz. I think–” Her voice cracked, but she frowned slightly and tried again. “I think my father would want his passing to at least be a lesson learned for Stormsby. We need to look after each other, now and always.”
I hovered in the doorway a moment longer, unsure what to do or say until Ciara tilted her head at the door, strawberry sleep-mussed waves spilling over her shoulder.
“Go on. Check on her.”
I spotted Sorcha the moment I stepped outside; a small figure silhouetted against the dark grey sky.
She was all the way down the path, standing on the other side of the old kissing gate and drifting back and forth.
Pacing, I realised as I drew closer. She froze when she caught sight of me, then promptly resumed, faster now even though she wasn’t going anywhere.
By the time I’d edged through the kissing gate, she was practically jogging past me.
“Everything alright?”
Sorcha nodded frantically; she was pale, her teeth chattering.
“Fine,” she said belatedly, her voice a touch higher than usual. “Everything’s fine.”
“What are you doing, then? It’s freezing.”
I rubbed at my bare arms for emphasis, despite the magic that warmed my blood and kept the goosebumps at bay.
Sorcha had no such defense against the cold.
The winds tugged at her thin shawl, whipping her hair around her face every time she turned to pass by the gate again.
By the wind-chafed red of her cheeks and the paling of her lips, I could only assume she’d been out here a while.
“I was waiting for the post.”
Bewildered, I glanced down the empty road, then back at the empty tin box that my father had haphazardly nailed to the outside of the gate. I flung an arm at it.
“We have a letterbox! Come inside.”
Her shoulders were rigid with the cold and the shrug she offered was stilted and painful.
“I always wait out here.”
“Oh good. And what am I to tell your mother if you catch your death in this chill?”
Sorcha faltered, a slight twitch passing over her features between one step and the next. I narrowed my eyes – not that she’d stop and meet them to take much notice. Why was she being so cagey?
“Sorcha?”
But my cousin wasn’t listening; she had stopped again, stiffening with something other than cold, her blue eyes wide as dinner plates. I followed her gaze and spotted the figure just down the path as they shuffled closer and offered a merry wave.
It was Ginny, who was not only Stormsby’s Postmaster but our sole messenger.
She had been delivering the messages since I was a girl, hobbling around Stormsby’s ramshackle roads no matter how many locals begged her to hire a youth to help her out.
Formidable as she was, she was getting on in years and had been for some time.
Even Tanner had always deferred to her as an elder, sobering the moment she set foot in the tavern and acting like a scolded schoolboy in her presence.
At the thought of Tanner, an image of him flickered in my mind, bent over my counter with his hands framing a pint and a cheeky grin on his weathered face.
My heart gave a little pang, and as Ginny drew even with us I had to force a smile to my face.
“Morning, Miss Roz. Sorcha darlin’. Gods, I’m cold just looking at the pair of ye with barely a rag on your backs,” she crowed. “Your lips are blue Sorcha! Have you been out here all morning?”
Sorcha offered her that same stilted shrug, and repeated; “I always wait for you.”
Ginny tutted, but seemed rather touched. Crow’s feet framed her eyes and fanned out as she held back a small smile, clearly as charmed by my cousin as the rest of the village.
“Well, I’d have tried to hurry if I knew you’d be freezing your toes off just for little old me,” she said between huffs of breath as she rooted around in the bag slung over her hip. “I was held up at Roy’s farmhouse for a while, bit of a kerfuffle – Aha!”
She finally fished out a tight scroll and brandished it at me with a hearty chuckle.
“Yet another one for you, Miss Roz. Would you believe it?”
“Another?”
I reached for it, and it didn’t escape my notice that Sorcha took a half-step forward as the letter passed from Ginny’s hand to mine.
My cousin held her tongue, but her eyes were glued to the scroll, locked on the movement of my fingers unpicking the wax and thread that held it shut.
I paused before I unrolled it, waiting for her to stop me or explain what it was that had her brows so tense, her lips pressed so tightly together.
When she just continued to stare, I unfurled the paper slowly, giving her as much opportunity to cut in as I could before my eyes dropped to read it.
It was short, the words scratched out by a desperate, hurried hand. I read over it once, twice, thrice – then slowly met my cousin’s eye to find my horrified stare mirrored in her own.
???
“Roz?”
Sorcha’s voice was small and timid, almost lost beneath the whistling of the kettle.
I raised my head from the cradle of my hands and caught a glimpse of her pale, crumpled face.
And though something inside me ached to fold her into my arms, I couldn’t.
A fearful sort of anger had tightened my every muscle.
Stiffly, I rose and crossed to the kettle without a word.
“I can do that,” Sorcha said, voice trembling.
Numbly, I let her take the kettle from my hands and watched as she prepared two mugs of tea; one for Ciara, and one for Ginny, who had come in for a bowl of porridge – or more likely, to get the full story behind mine and Sorcha’s tense, wordless exchange over the mysterious letter she’d delivered.
The letter that still sat so heavy in the pocket of my apron, weighing me down with such strength that I could almost imagine my shoulders curving inward, just as Sorcha’s now were. I watched her fuss over the teas, pored over her sweet worried face in profile until the weight became too much.
“Your mother never sent you here, did she?”
Sorcha set down the teaspoon in her hand and gripped the counter, steadying her breath before she glanced up to me.
“No. No, she didn’t.”
Pulling the letter out of my apron, I unravelled it and laid it flat between us on the countertop, ignoring the guilty way Sorcha’s eyes darted away from the paper and bounced over the mess of tea leaves and spilled milk surrounding it.
I tapped at the hastily scrawled ink, and she reluctantly turned her gaze to it.
Rosaleen,