Chapter 7 #2
My face heats under her words. Do I show her the scars on my palms from where my father hits me?
Do I open my mouth and let every verse of Blessed Scripture he has made me memorize in the dark and the cold of my room spill out?
Do I empty the bell onto my raw and bleeding palm and tell her the story of Bram Avery, the man who died, hiding in the shadows of my bedroom, begging me to bring him back from the dead?
Do I tell her of the way my own heart betrays me, pulls me down until I see black and forget the things I might have done?
I cast my gaze to my feet, my toe scooping troughs in the muck. “There is so much you don’t know, Clara. So much that you would never believe me if I told you.”
Her boots come into my line of vision, shiny black leather dulled with frozen mud. Her finger curls beneath my chin, drawing my eyes to meet hers.
“You can tell me, Adelaide. And I will tell you my secrets. Sisters in silence.”
A strange emotion grabs a hold of my heart and squeezes.
For a moment, I brace myself for the pain, the slippage of arteries and chambers in the wrong moments, the wrong time.
But they do not come. I am like a bud caught in spring frost, tossed about by bitter wind.
There is so much to say, but all of my words taste of poison.
“I’m so very different from you, Clara,” I say finally. “So very different from any of the women in Rixton.”
Because my father beats me? Because I see dead people? Because I am known by the souls trapped in the rowan wood?
Because, perhaps, it is I who is the true monster? The girl who steals souls.
Mayor Samuels certainly believes it. And do I truly know where I go in the blackness of my fits?
For the first time in my life, I allow my mind to truly drift to places I have only entertained.
My black blood, my white hair, the way death seems to limn my body like a second skin.
The Reaper’s bell like a stone in my pocket.
Maybe I am in the shadows because Erybrus is all I have ever known. Perhaps my soul belongs to the darkness.
Clara clucks her tongue. “Even though I doubt that is true, I know what it’s like to be different.” Her eyes lower to the basket she is holding, and curiosity overwhelms me.
I study her sunken cheeks, the way she has almost seemed to age years since I last glimpsed her.
She frowns. “There are things you don’t know either, Adelaide. When you lost your mother, I lost someone too.” She reaches out, faster than fire, and grips my hand before I can pull away. “I lost you. I lost the person I told everything to. Every secret, every joke, every pain or hurt or joy.”
Her eyes light at the last word. Joy. It’s a funny one. So few letters for so big a thing.
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you. For years, really. But once your father pulled you from church, kept you locked up, I couldn’t get to you. And now—” Her head swivels back toward the village, and I am left with an aching in my gut.
“What is it you’ve been wanting to tell me?”
When she turns, Clara’s eyes are as large as hazelnuts. A smile brightens the tired hollows of her cheeks. She squeezes my hand tighter.
“Liza and I are getting married. Our parents know, and everyone is thrilled, but—”
I cannot help the smile—a real, true, alive sort of thing—breaking across my lips. In this moment, I am twelve years old again, running through fields with Clara, drinking gingerbread tea and reading contraband romance novels before the fire while we giggle into our too-pink palms.
“Clara, I—”
She rushes a finger to my lips. “There’s trouble.”
And I see it there, in the crushed petal stains around her eyes, in the way her fingers twitch on the handle of her basket.
“What do you mean?”
Clara sighs, dropping her hand to fuss with the lace napkin concealing whatever is inside her basket. “It’s my father. He’s… Well, Liza and I are planning on running away, and I know he doesn’t want us to leave.”
I blink. “The bakery.”
It’s a trivial thing to be concerned over, when there are monsters in the woods and ghosts in the house, with the coach only days away. But for Clara, it is her life. And life is never trivial.
She shakes her head. “I do not want it. Liza and I, we want to start our own. In the Queen’s city.
In Lysdin.” She takes my hand again, her eyes welling with tears.
A smile takes root in the corners of her mouth.
“Think of it, Adelaide. We’ve all heard tales of it, simply bursting with opportunity.
It’s where Erybrus broke away from Ithrandril, where we can be closest to the warmth of all that is good and righteous.
Where we may become good and righteous. Besides, Rixton is too small.
And I want to see life out there, beyond Farmer Whitley’s fields, past the graveyard walls and the Avery Manor orchards.
Places even grander than Blackbourne Castle. ”
Breath hisses from my lungs at her last words. Ransom Black still sits at the edges of my mind, drifting there like a phantom. I can feel his soft hands on my ankle, pressing cotton against the cut on my heel.
“Adelaide.”
Clara’s kind voice draws me back, and I feel so small, wretched, and utterly insignificant. I pull my hands away, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.
“I am happy for you.”
A silence settles over us, and Clara steps back. It isn’t entirely uncomfortable. I am used to the quiet, the way it fills the space between my bones like paste.
If I turn my chin over my shoulder, I dread the soul will still be there, waiting for me. Waiting for whatever it wants of me. I whisper a silent thank you to whatever is listening that Clara does not seem to be able to see it.
She unfolds the cloth from inside the basket, revealing a smattering of browned scones, each one dusted with sugar and orange zest. Clara holds one out to me, and for a moment, all I seem to be able to do is stare stupidly at it. She nudges it closer.
“Take it, for me. It’s orange and rosemary.”
My cold fingers wrap around the pastry, and I tuck it into my pocket beside the bell. “I will save it for later.”
Clara nods. “Thank you for listening. I know it might seem silly—”
“It’s not silly,” I say before I can stop myself. “Love is quite a serious thing, I think. And I am happy you have found it with Liza. I wish you all the best.”
Her smile cracks like a robin’s egg, and before I can stop her, she is throwing her arms around me, and all I smell is yeast and sugar and something like lavender soap.
“Thank you, Adelaide,” she whispers into my hair. “I’ve wanted to tell you for so long. Just, thank you.”
When she pulls away, her cheeks are stained rose, and her eyes are shiny and wet. The knot in my stomach tightens, and I curl my hands in, letting the pain of nails in my flesh ground me. Hold me steady. Give me space to breathe. I clear my throat, bob my head, stretch a weary smile.
“You’re welcome.”
Behind us, the church bell rings the hour, and Clara nearly jumps from her clutch of scarves and shawls and coat. “I’ve got to go. Liza will be waiting for me. We’re packing. The next coach from Rixton leaves soon.”
How could I forget?
I wring my smile until all the joy is dripping down my chin. “Ithrandril go with you.”
“Thank you.” She turns to leave, then stops, a ghost of a grin still haunting her lips. “And, Adelaide, you deserve happiness too.”
I nod, but I don’t believe her. Ithrandril abandoned me a long time ago, and soon, so will everyone else. I watch Clara disappear back up the bank, across the bridge, and down the lane of thatched houses, taking all the happiness in the world with her.
I blow breath out from between my lips and pull the bell out of my pocket. The line of rowans is deserted. No white mist, no teeth damp with saliva, no words worming their way into the thoughts.
Only silence.
I roll the bell in my palm, watching it catch the dim light.
A Reaper’s bell. Death’s bell.
I barely know a thing about Bram Avery. Whether he is a liar or one who speaks truth. All I can be sure of is the way he huddled in a corner, afraid of things I could not see, and offered me the devil’s deal.
Once, a fool. Twice, a thief.
I close my fingers around the bell, looking out at the rushing river warring against the ice.
Happiness. A word that should taste of honey but slips down my throat like fermented wine. The wheat fields beyond the water waver in the wind, gold against all the gray, all the dead and dying things. A wind dances through the rowans, and the leaves whisper words in my ears.
Love is quite a serious thing.
My words.
I swallow, fingering the bell, setting to memory the pattern impressed upon the brass. There has only ever been one person who loved me: Mother. I hear Bram’s voice in my head.
Two faces beneath one hood.
Two souls to steal from Erybrus.
Three days. I have three days.
Three days to bring my mother home. With her here, Father will forget all thoughts of Idlewild, and I can move beyond this wretched semblance of a life. I can find joy once more.
If Mother is alive, maybe, just maybe, my father will become the man he once was.
The man who smiled and brought me on his walks about the village.
I close my eyes, picture the meadows in summer, Father’s warm hand in mine, the way he used to laugh when I chased rabbits from the blackberry thicket.
That is the Father I want. Not the fragile monster with scales for skin, scared of what the world will think, who ties me to chairs and threatens to send me away.
I want him to be more than bitter memories.
Resurrect the man who laughed and sang and read bedtime stories.
I imagine my mother. Her honey-gold hair, the light reflecting off the River Thine matching the blue in her eyes. The way she taught me to sink my fingers into the earth, tend the growing shoots of foxglove, oleander, larkspur.
I hold the bell up against the sun. Rays of light catch the metal’s decorative swirls. It takes all my strength not to ring it right now, out in the open. But I do not want Ithrandril to see. To damn me when I cross into the dark. I clench my fist and turn back to the vicarage.
Once, a fool. Twice, a thief.
Well, then. Thief it is.