Chapter 4 #2
Father bows his head. “We call to Ithrandril. We ask him to greet us with holy warmth, to expel the shadow that our sin welcomes in and the sins of his brother, Erybrus. We ask that he shine his face on our departed, welcoming her into the brilliance of life eternal.”
Those attending lower their gazes against the drizzle streaming from the gray sky, fingers tracing the shape of flame over their chests.
I keep my eyes open, study the trees veiled in mist. The wood is still.
Too still. As if even the trees are holding their breath, waiting.
For what, I do not know, but the thought chills me to the bone.
Hester’s father—the mayor—tosses dirt to her casket, his pouched face clotted with tears. Her mother goes next, and then we all take a turn. When it comes time for mine, I stoop under the weight of a hundred thousand eyes. My throat runs raw, heart thudding—a mad thing in my chest.
I stand and catch the mayor’s stare. His tears remain, but there is something else there too. Something I know all too well.
Hatred.
I toss the earth, the smack of it against the casket reverberating through the churchyard. Let them hate me. What does it matter?
“Ithrandril above, welcome Hester into your divine brilliance, where the shadow can no longer find her.”
The villagers echo the pronouncement, and the bell tolls while Father concludes the rites.
Unlike Lilith’s service, no one files into the church.
The village has gorged itself on death for long enough.
I catch Clara’s eye from across the tombstones, her arm hooked through Liza’s.
When she sees me, she turns away, and the rejection burns hot across my skin.
Merely strangers. No longer the friends we might have once been. She has seen my hard edges and knows there is no way to soften them now.
I am once more left alone amidst the graves.
The rain pours down in steady streams, but I don’t mind.
This is what they expect of me now, I suppose.
Naked and dripping wet. Dancing with the shadow.
At the bottom of the hill, the silver-barked rowans stand like sentinels.
There is hardly a leaf left on their haggard branches.
Something shifts in the corner of my eye.
White smoke.
A slight ringing of tinny sound echoes in my ears.
I choke. Back away. No, not now. But my ankle twists in something, and I am sprawling beside a tomb. I turn toward the white petals of flowers that shouldn’t be blooming this time of year and a familiar name etched in stone.
Bram Avery.
Bitterbloom vines catch my boot, their fibrous fingers a hare trap at my heel.
I scramble, tearing at them, while their deep scarlet sap leaks across my hand.
And I wipe it hurriedly on a gloss of wet leaves, knowing even a drop could kill me stone dead.
Just another grave to be dug amongst hundreds.
When I glance upward, the smoke is closer. Panic rises in my chest, fingers scrabbling at the damp earth to get up, up, up.
My heart races, throws beats so hard against my spindled bones I think they might crack. I crouch at the crest of Bram Avery’s tombstone, tucking my head to my elbows and hurrying a finger to my throat. The answer that awaits me sends my blood boiling.
Doom-ed, doom-ed, doom-ed.
My chest seizes when the pain comes, the agony washing over me in nauseating waves. I try to rise, but I can’t. My legs are useless, tethered to the dirt. Nothing more than a prisoner. And this time, the bars are of my own making. My own flesh.
I dip my head to my elbow and draw a steadying breath, then reach into my pocket and feel for the bell. While I can’t explain it, the cold brass brings me comfort. A sense of grounding.
Get up. Just get up. It cannot hurt you.
But when I look back, the trees beyond the graveyard stand empty.
I breathe a sigh of relief, my sinew softening, heart slowing to a steady rhythm.
My sweat-slick palm slides along the headstone when I rise shakily to my feet.
Whatever was there is gone now, and even though my heart feels like it’s slipping wetly in my chest, it maintains course. I take another breath.
“Adelaide!”
Father. His voice clawing at my ears through the fog of fear.
I peer at him through the undulating mist enveloping the graveyard.
He stands beside Mayor Samuels on the hill toward the church, his lips a thin line.
Father bows his hat to the mayor, mumbles words I do not hear, and turns toward me.
His cloak whips about his knees like dusky shadows.
“What are you still doing out here?” he demands, trailing down the hill, dirt smeared on his gloves.
I say nothing, focus on the returning calm of my heart.
“Come here.”
I hold his gaze, challenge him, but I fail. His gloves tighten around his flexed hands.
He nods grimly while the ground squishes beneath my boots. Up close, he smells of tallow wax and stale wine. “What are you doing out here? It’s not safe.”
“Not safe for me?” I think of Mayor Samuels, the hatred in his eyes. “Or are others unsafe because of me, Father?”
His smile contracts, a stitch pulled tight and painful somewhere high on his cheek. “Do not play games with me, child. I do not deal in idle words.”
I cannot hide my irritation. Idle words are all he knows. Blessed Scriptures from Ithrandril are nothing but a waste of time.
“What were the words you dealt?” I ask. “Just now, with Mayor Samuels?”
It is not the question I should be asking. In fact, I should ask no questions at all. Stay quiet, bide my time until I figure out what the hell I’m doing, lessen the chances of being tied to the chair tonight. My fingers curl at my sides.
His mouth twists, yet he offers an arm. “Let’s take a walk.”
I blink, try to swallow, but the muscles in my throat snag. I loop my arm through his and follow where he leads, the soft ground of the graveyard giving beneath my feet.
“Mayor Samuels has brought some…concerns to my attention.”
Of course he has. I grind the inside of my cheek between hardened teeth.
“The villagers are growing worried about all the deaths, about the girls still left in Rixton. Many folks are thinking of sending their daughters away—their wives, even—to places deeper in the countryside, even to Lysdin, perhaps. The Samuels were just discussing it before…before…well…” His voice trails off.
Nerves tie knots in my stomach. I lave my tongue across my lips, but they remain as dry as sand.
“I have decided to contact one such place. For you. A house of healing near the border of Idlewild. The mayor assures me it is the safest option.”
Dread prickles at the back of my neck, his words searing my skin like a brand.
A house of healing. I’ve heard of such places.
Buildings made from iron and stone, filled with cells for those society no longer wants.
Women who question their husbands and daughters who carry curses in their veins.
Just another prison. Another place to be molded and formed to Ithrandril, when all that runs in my veins is shadow.
Dread curdles to anger in my stomach.
“Am I allowed no say in this?” The question cracks between my lips.
Father’s eyes harden. “Your sickness runs deep, child. Who is to say your mind can even make the right decisions anymore?”
I swallow another jolt of anger. “There is nothing wrong with my mind.”
“No?” It is not so much a question as it is a challenge. “Then tell me, where do you go when your sickness takes over? What do you do when everything around is devoured by shadow?” He reaches toward my cheek, then hesitates, as if a single touch might poison him.
His countenance shatters, and there is a flicker there of the man I used to know. The father who used to sing while he washed the dishes and lit candles in the windows of the vicarage every Yuletide. But then his face tightens, and he presses forward.
“The next coach arrives in Rixton within the week.”
My boots slip in the muddy grass. His sharpened words cut my throat.
“I wonder, Father, if you say any of this for my comfort or only to make yourself feel better for sending me away. These houses of healing, they’re mad. Filled with—”
His gaze snags on something beyond us, and then he grips my shoulder, fingernails digging into my flesh. “They think it’s you, Adelaide. That your gods-cursed blood has made you a monster.”
“I have done nothing!” Rain runs down my face, but I do not reach to wipe it away. It is a truth I already know, what the villagers believe me capable of simply because I am different. Sickly.
Father clenches his jaw. “Do you have something to confess, Adelaide? Otherwise, you have left me no other choice.”
“You have every choice.” Saliva pools at the back of my tongue, sweet as nightshade. I blink hard against tears. “You could choose to love me, to keep me safe, believe that I am not this…this monster, but you lock me in a room when my sickness—”
“Enough, child!” My father stretches tall, his fists clenched.
My eyes latch onto the pin of his cloak. In the hazy light, his eyes teem with hellfire, jaw so rigid every line, every bone, juts out like broken porcelain. I grit my teeth, and my pulse flutters in my throat.
“I am not a child.”
“You will harken to me!” Father’s voice is sharp as thorns, lips peeled back in a snarl. “You are a fool, Adelaide. A sickly fool. And you will do as I say. If you—” He takes a breath to steady himself. “If you ever loved your mother, you will listen and do as I say.”
His rage turns to shadows on his face, and I can barely draw a breath. He stands there a moment longer, erect, the anger steaming off him in waves. And then he sighs, a ragged thing, lifts his hat from his head to wipe at the sweaty, graying locks.
“The decision has been made, Adelaide. I have been assured you will be well taken care of, that your illness will be cured. The men who run the house of healing are men of the church, blessed by Ithrandril. They say that when you return home, you will be every inch the woman your mother wished you could be. And you will be safe.”
A hiss of hot air escapes my teeth when all the restraints binding my tongue snap.
“Does it feel good? Saying the words you’ve practiced, over and over again, to yourself, in the bitter darkness of night, with perfect ease?
Does it make you feel strong to send me away, to do what is best?
Are you so scared of”—I glance down at my shaking hands, pressing them toward him—“of this that you spend so much time away, so frightened of the darkness you see in me? Maybe, Father, you should be afraid of yourself. Because if anything, you are the darkness.”
I do not waste time watching my words hit their mark.
Instead, I turn my back and trudge up the hill away from the graveyard.
I wait for him to call me, to drag me to the garden shed by my hair and burn the whole thing to the ground with me inside.
But I hear only silence and the steady scratch of willow branches against the vicarage.
I make my way through the kitchen door and to my room, the church bell clanging out a funeral dirge.