Chapter 14 #2
"I have seen this hand before. I cannot read it. It is the high tongue. The court tongue. There are perhaps a dozen Aos Sí alive who can still read it fluently. There were once thousands. There are now perhaps a dozen ."
"My grandmother kept this in her chimney." Poppy’s eyes were wide.
Alsander nodded. "She did."
"My grandmother had an elvish book in her chimney."
"Caitlín. Saoirse," Alsander added softly, "and whoever came before them. They knew it was here. They kept it. They couldn’t read it. They held it for whoever could."
Poppy turned another page. A great curving shape that might have been a dragon or might have been the line of a coast seen from above, was scrawled a across the page, the script in spirals around it.
She turned another. Another drawing of the pendant — this time with the chain pulled tight, the stone bright at the throat of a stylized woman whose face was only suggested.
She turned another.
The script changed character. Sharper. Pointed. Urgent.
There was a small notation at the top of the page, clearly not part of the original script, and Alsander's finger brushed over it before he had fully registered it.
"What does that mean?" Poppy whispered. "You said you couldn't read it."
"I cannot. But I know that mark." His voice was very low. "It is the mark for a binding . A working. Something performed. A page of instruction. The rest of the book is history, perhaps, or song. This page is something one is supposed to do."
They looked at the page together.
A page they couldn’t read.
A page that might break the curse.
A page that might tell them how to finish what the Lady had begun three hundred years ago.
A page in a language only a dozen magical creatures in the world could still read.
"We go to them," Alsander said.
She closed the book.
"No."
"Poppy."
" No. "
"Listen to me." He had stepped back so he could see her face.
The careful tenderness was gone out of his voice, replaced by something flat and old and tired.
"You heard your great-grandmother. The full of your line's story is in their hands. The book in your hands is in a tongue only they can read. They are the only ones who can tell us what we need to know. There is nothing else. We have read through everything else you have. The answer is with them. You will stay here. We don’t know which one wrote it — which one allowed a human girl with knowledge of the Draquonir, knowledge of the Secret Kingdoms, to live. So, you will stay and I will go."
Poppy’s heart, already pounding, nearly doubled in speed. "We don’t know where they are."
"I know where they are."
"You said you haven’t seen them in two hundred years."
"I know which hill, Poppy. I have not gone because I had no reason to be welcome. I have a reason now."
"Alsander." She was holding the book against her chest. She hadn’t realized she had pulled it to her chest. "You cannot just walk up to a hill of elves with a book they haven’t seen in ten generations, maybe ever, and say solve this for me. "
"Why not?"
"Because they will keep it." Her voice rose. "They will keep the book. It is theirs — more theirs than mine. If you walk into their hall and put it in their hands, they will look at it and they will know what it is and they won’t give it back. Or they will read it and refuse to tell you what it says. Or they will tell you what it says and demand a price for the telling I can’t pay. Or worse."
"Poppy —"
"No. I don’t know these people. You don’t know these people anymore. You said it yourself. They haven’t come to you in two hundred years. We don’t know what they are now ."
"And we can’t know without going to them."
"Yes, we can."
His jaw locked.
"How?"
"My mother's aunt."
"Your what ?"
"My mother's aunt, Alsander. My great-aunt.
She is —" Poppy was speaking faster now — "she is the oldest woman in our line who is still alive.
She lives in Dublin. She is my mother's aunt, my grandmother's sister, the last of that generation.
She is older than I should say and sharper than anyone I have ever met.
She has known about the line all her life. "
"Does she read old Elvish ?"
"I think so. I think she might. The younger siblings passed down other gifts — the way ours passed down the pendant and knowledge about healing herbs. My grandmother told me once, when I was small, that her sister had been strange about languages. That she could read things no one else in the family could read. I didn’t understand at the time.
" Think and might. " He scowled. “You want to trust this with someone who might know something. You think .”
"Alsander." She put a hand on her hip. No way was she going to trust a bunch of murdering elves with her book. No way. Not happening. “It’s a nice drive. You’ll love it."
"You are asking me to drive two hundred miles in a country I have not seen in three centuries on a think and a might ."
"I am asking you to drive two hundred miles to the only living person in my line who can possibly translate this book without taking it from us."
He stared at her. "And if she cannot?"
"Then we go to the elves."
"Poppy —"
" Then we go. " Her voice was a shake away from breaking but it held. "I am not stupid, Alsander. I am not refusing to do the hard thing. I am refusing to do the worst thing first. We go to her. If she can read it, we save ourselves a bargain we cannot afford. If she can’t, she still knows things. I bet she knows which elves to go to. She knows the price. She has been waiting , Alsander — the way Saoirse waited, the way my grandmother waited. She has been keeping herself ready for the day. She’s been distant since my grandmother died. I haven’t seen her in five years.
I think she’s been making herself ready. "
"Five years."
"Yes."
"She is one woman."
"She is family. " Poppy's voice cracked. "She is mine. She is the last person in my line who remembers what the line is . She’s in Dublin. Two hundred miles. She won’t hunt me down and execute me for existing or turn me into a bargaining chip. She’s my aunt ."
He pressed his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose.
"Two hundred miles."
"Yes."
"Days of travel."
" Hours , by car."
"Then we fly.”
Poppy thought about it. Flying would be easiest. It would be exciting. Yet something deep inside her whispered that such travel would be unwise. She’d always listened to that voice. “I think we should drive. Please trust me on this, Alsander.”
His eyes narrowed. “With Laoch behind us and a curse in my body and your body —" he caught himself. He didn’t finish. "We don’t have long, Poppy."
"We have enough." Her voice was steady now. "Enough for Dublin and back. The elves can wait until we have a person to vouch for us. They haven’t gone anywhere in five thousand years. They will wait two more days. We can not run into a hall of strangers with a book we can’t read.
We go to my aunt. We learn what we can. We come back armed. "
He looked at her for a long, tense moment.
She watched him fight the part of himself that had spent three hundred years refusing to ask anyone for anything — the part of himself that had decided that if he was going to ask now, he was going to ask the oldest and most powerful source available.
She watched him fight and lose. For her. Because she asked.
"Your aunt."
"My aunt."
" First. "
"First. And if she cannot help us, the elves."
"Agreed."
"Alsander —" her voice almost broke — "thank you."
"Don’t thank me. You are right. I don’t like that you are right. But you are right. "
She set the elvish book down on the table beside her grandmother's journal and Saoirse's book and the cracked teacup. She put her arms around him. He held her against his chest with one hand at the back of her head and the other flat against her spine.
They stood in the firelit dark with the books of her foremothers on the table behind them and the dead garden beyond the window. After a moment he pressed his face into her hair.
"I hate that I love you," he said quietly. "I hate it. It would be so much easier if I didn’t."
"I know," she said into his throat, a small smile spreading across her lips. “I feel the same way.”
"I don’t know how I am supposed to do any of this without losing you."
"I know. We’ll figure it out."
She let go of him long enough to walk to the hearth, kneel, and slide the brick carefully back into place.
The seam closed. The hearth was as it had always been.
She rose. Dusted off her knees. Looked at her own kitchen, which was no longer entirely her kitchen.
At her own life, which was no longer entirely hers.
She held out her hand. "It’s too late to go tonight. Come to bed.”
He didn’t have to be told twice. He scooped her up and carried her to the bedroom, where he spent the remainder of the night alternately watching his mate sleep and making her scream his name.