Chapter Thirteen Kit
Chapter Thirteen
Kit
Catharine isn’t sitting by the fire when I reach the croft. I close the door and look around. She’s still curled on the makeshift mattress Mrs. Westness pulled out for us into the corner of the main room, the blanket up to her chin. She opens her eyes when I step over.
I kneel beside the bed. “Are you all right?” I’ve never known Catharine to sleep so late, even when she was younger and unused to rising with me for chores.
She blinks, eyes watery with sleep. “What time is it?” She pushes herself up. “I was meant to have breakfast ready for you!”
“It’s fine.” I put a hand on her arm.
Catharine looks toward the window. “It’s late, isn’t it? I’m so sorry. I thought—I don’t know how I slept so long.”
But I know. I remember the way a cloud of fatigue would steal over me, and I couldn’t seem to get enough sleep.
Habit and need would drive me up anyway, even when my body felt like it would cave for the want of rest. I always pushed through.
But Catharine isn’t used to it. I take the pillow from my side of the bed and try to prop up the two together so she can sit comfortably.
It’s nothing like the pillows at the castle.
When Catharine leans back, these flatten to barely more than a blanket.
“I should get up, anyway,” she says with a little smile. “I want to hear how it went.”
“I can tell you just as easily here. I’ll just warm the room and get you a cup of small beer—no, you stay.” I smile to make the command gentler. “Just rest.”
Catharine sighs but doesn’t try to get up. “You’re the one who should be resting.”
I ignore her as I check the fire. Mrs. Westness must have relit it before she went out for the morning.
I stir the peat, my eyes stinging in the smoke.
King Byrne is coming. May already be on his way.
My heart hammers. The Hidden Lands seem like a dream—a story I slipped through—in the face of the fear that nips at my chest now.
This is real. This is danger. I know it isn’t rational, but the risks I took last night feel like nothing in comparison.
Worse is coming. Hurt is coming. Just the thought of seeing him again makes my lungs close.
“Kit?” Catharine’s voice is soft behind me. “Is it … Did you always feel this way?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, facing her.
Catharine has her bandaged hand resting on her chest. Slowly, she says, “I feel as if I can count every breath. As if I have to concentrate to draw them in. As if … my skin is too tight and small. My eyelids too heavy.” She lifts her gaze to mine, and it strikes me as strange all over again—my face looking at me, my eyes worried and sorrowful and …
afraid. “Did you always feel like this?” Her voice whispers, cracks.
“How could you bear always feeling like this?”
I leave the fire and sit on the bed, wrapping my arms round my sister. But not just her—round myself too. My frightened, broken body.
“It’s not always so bad,” I say, my throat tight. “It comes and goes. I got used to it—but you won’t have to. I’ll have you back to yourself before you have to.”
Catharine tightens her hold of me, crushing her face into my shoulder. “I didn’t know, Kit. I didn’t know.”
I can’t speak around the hole in my chest. Even with my love and my sadness engulfing me, I’m struck by the ease of my breathing.
The lightness of my bones. The joints that don’t hook and pierce when I squeeze, when I clutch the back of Catharine’s dress in my hands.
No one has known, I realize. I didn’t even know.
I am a whirlwind of feeling. Afraid of this breaking thing I’ll soon be trapped in again. Proud of myself—my small, younger self—who did her duty no matter how much her body wanted to curl over and sleep. And sad. Sad, sad, sad. Sadder than I’ve ever let myself know.
I pull back from Catharine, wiping the wet from my cheeks as I return to the fire. I pour the drinks into mugs. The movement settles me, and the gulf of sadness fades back to a place less vivid. A place I can tuck away. I grab some flatbread while I’m up and then join Catharine again on the floor.
“Here,” I say, handing her mug over. “It’s my turn to tell you a story. It’s stranger than the ones you’ve read and true as the sky is gray.”
“You’ve missed an opportunity to rhyme,” she says, rubbing her knuckles under her eyes. “The sky is blue.”
“I’ve yet to see a blue sky here.” I lift my eyebrows. “Now listen. There was once an enchanted prince …”
I tell her the story of last night, trying to weave it into the style of her folktales. Somehow, framing it in the way of the stories we read in her books makes it feel at once clearer and safer. When I finish, we both sip our small beer and fall into a thoughtful silence.
“Pain doesn’t wake him up,” Catharine says at last.
“What?” I ask, drawing myself back to the room. I had begun to think of King Byrne again, though I hadn’t yet found a way to bring him up.
“Prince Idris. His feet were bleeding by the end, you said, and he’d collapsed a few times.” Catharine tilts her head and scrunches her nose. I didn’t know my nose could wrinkle like that. “He must have been in pain, but it didn’t wake him.”
“Maybe he can’t be conscious while he’s in the Hidden Lands.”
“You said there was a spark, a moment,” Catharine points out, “when you were in the boat together. Maybe his daze isn’t a part of the curse. It would certainly be useful to have him awake next time.”
“Hmm.” She could be right, but I don’t know what else would cause someone to be so disconnected from their surroundings.
My thoughts wander again to tonight. I’ll need to free Abram.
And find a way to help Idris if I can. And find a cure for Catharine’s and my curse.
We’ll need to leave as soon as we can after tomorrow, to put some distance between us and Byrne.
It’s as good a time as any to let Catharine know the news. I clear my throat and explain that Jay has returned. Catharine brightens, pleased that he’s safe.
I hesitate. Dread pools in my stomach at even the shape of Byrne’s name on my lips, but I make myself say it. “King Byrne has been looking for us. He sent out word that I … kidnapped you. Jay believed him and has written to him with our location.”
I expect horror to spread over Catharine’s face. For her to shrink back like I did at the news.
“That’s an odd thing to think.” She looks thoughtful and then smiles. “But this is good! If Father gets the news before your mother finds us, then he can help.”
My fingers tighten on my mug. “What?”
“We needed to run to put distance between us and your mother,” Catharine explains, as if I’ve forgotten a basic piece of the past. “In case she tried to do something worse. But if my father gets here first, then she can’t harm us anymore—she wouldn’t dare.
Not that I want her to be punished for what she did,” Catharine adds quickly, misreading the dismay on my face.
“Of course, I don’t want my father to know your mother was behind it all.
I’m sure she must have been confused about what the spell was—she couldn’t have meant to hurt us. ”
I feel winded by the innocence, kindness, and naivety of Catharine’s understanding of our situation.
For the first time, I realize we haven’t really talked about what we were doing.
We just ran. I assumed she knew that we were running from both our parents, but she assumed we were running from my mother and to protect my mother from the consequences of her actions. She only has half the picture.
“I …” My skin flushes with heat. I feel every part of me, every word that tries to form and dies in my mouth. I wish I had just told Catharine the truth months ago, years ago. Wouldn’t it have been easier to blurt it out the first time it happened? Couldn’t I have done it better then?
But I was only fourteen. I didn’t understand. And in the two years since, my reasons have only become more complex. They tangle, threading through the things I wish I could say, silencing every sentence before it can begin.
I cannot speak the truth. So I try to find my way to it from an angle, to circle toward the heart of it without letting my mind know that’s what I intend in the end.
“I think your father might still punish my mother if he realizes we have been cursed,” I say slowly. “Even if we did not reveal she was involved.”
Catharine takes my hand, all earnestness. “I won’t let him hurt your mother. I promise, Kit. He’ll be angry, probably, but I can help him forgive her.”
I resent Catharine now more than I’ve ever let myself resent her.
Because she believes it—she believes that there are angers and hurts that can just be loved into peace, that with enough goodness all the bad will be washed away.
My envy is sharp and bitter, and I try to shake myself free as soon as the feeling strikes me.
I don’t want to think of my sister this way, to be angry like my mother, but I do want to grab Catharine and say, Look at the body you’re in! Look at what he’s done!
But I try a different tactic, toeing my way a little closer to the truth. A little closer to the raw, open wound of the thing. “He’s told the whole country that I kidnapped you. What if he punishes me? Or—you, in my body.”
Catharine shakes her head. “He’s mistaken. We need only tell him that we left together.” She presses my hand. “He would never hurt you.”
I’m on my feet before I know I’ve pushed back. My skin burns. My mouth tastes sour. Catharine stares at me in surprise, and part of me knows I should stay. I should speak now. I should just come out with it.
But my stomach turns over, and shock runs through my limbs like icy lightning, and the croft is too small and too dark and I can’t trust her. I can’t tell her. I am alone, and the door is closed—
“I—need—to step outside,” I say quickly. “Just a moment.”
I dive outside and into the cold. I’ve forgotten my pelisse, but I don’t care.
The frigid wind sears my own freezing insides, and I am half in my body again.
I walk, quickly, taking to the hills behind the house.
There is a door in my mind, and it is locked, and there are hands reaching for me, and I am so, so small.
I try to shove the memories back. That is past. That is behind. I am not there anymore.
I am here. I am here.
But the door in my mind won’t open. The bolt catches it, holds it shut. I pull and pull and it won’t budge.
I concentrate on the crunch of frosted grass under my feet. The smell of sea and sheep. The tendrils of hair tickling my neck. The tight burn of each breath in my lungs. I count them: One and two and three and four …
A hand closes on my shoulder. Is it in my mind, or is it happening now? A voice chiding me. Don’t be afraid, little girl.
I uncross my arms and put my right forefinger against my collarbone. I tap quickly—one, two, three, four, five—and I make my breaths stretch out, so that each one takes five seconds to inhale and then again to exhale. The slope grows steep under my feet, but I keep tapping and counting.
His hand is not on me. He is not here.
I crest the rise, my heart pounding with the exercise instead of panic.
My blood boils with heat. The standing stones loom scattered before me, dark-gray with streaks of black from the rain.
A few sheep lie in their shadow or tucked against them for protection from the wind. They eye me with cautious interest.
I begin tapping again, making myself pay attention to everything around me. I turn in a circle. The landscape unfurls below me like a map—part mist and part patchwork of fields and stone walls. The silver sea blends to silver sky. A boat is out there, vanishing into the cloud.
The past sinks into the past. The girl and the man and the door lose their sharpness, become just a memory again. I am in my body. I am whole, and here. I stretch my neck and feel settled, again. Myself, again.
The memory has receded to where it belongs. I am awake.
It would certainly be useful to have him awake next time.
I look down at my still-tapping finger.
I think I know how to help Idris.