Chapter 27 Hel Is Empty and All the Devils Are Here #3
The rebuke was both fair and unfair and so stung doubly.
“I was never going to abandon my Order and the defenceless children here,” said Aurienne.
“Surely you know me enough to know that. I didn’t ask you to do any of those things.
I’m grateful beyond words for them, but you can’t hold them against me.
If I hadn’t been here to transfer seith, the Wardens wouldn’t have held on as long as they did.
And you almost got yourself killed, too.
I didn’t ask for that. Don’t think you’re the only one who’s allowed to be angry. ”
“If you had listened to me, I wouldn’t have had to.” Osric’s jaw was taut. “I’d made my peace with our parting. All I wanted was for you to be safe.”
“I’m safe,” said Aurienne.
She sought a truce. She ran her thumb tentatively along his wrist.
He pulled his hand away.
It hurt her in new ways. In the same ways she had hurt him, at the waystone?
He said he had made peace with their parting.
She felt sick.
“You almost died,” said Osric in a tight voice. “I gave you a way out and you almost died.”
Aurienne watched the hand with the Fyren tācn clutch at the sheets.
If you burn a bridge you didn’t want in the first place, wasn’t that—good? Why did it hurt so much?
“Does Mrs. Parson know you’re here?” asked Aurienne, taking refuge in logistics.
“No.”
“I’ll let her know.”
Osric made no answer.
“Please follow Xanthe’s instructions. It’ll give your eyes the best chance to heal. You’re—you’re in the best possible care here. You should rest. I’m going to leave now.”
“Go,” said Osric. “You needn’t come back.”
“I hope your eyes heal all right,” said Aurienne.
“I don’t want to see you again.”
He was a blur through Aurienne’s tears, a fading ghost on the bed.
A pile of his belongings sat on a chair. She returned his signet ring in silence, tucking it into the pocket of his cloak.
That night, Aurienne, too troubled to sleep, too exhausted to be awake, lay in her bed, suffocated by the dolour of an unhappy heart. Osric’s words had shredded through her more viciously than any of his knives.
She was one of those professional ironies—the poorly shod cobbler, the tailor in threadbare clothes, the healer with the gaping wound in her chest. Doing things for the best, not for herself.
New scars on her hands and her heart a palimpsest of pain.
She had thought to be doing what was right and logical and for the best with Osric. Regret and sadness plagued her since she returned the signet ring.
The hagstone hung heavy around her neck.
The sky, teeming with stars, drew a perfect circle of light through the open window at the top of her tower. It fell upon the plaster cast of the Monafyll Stone, bone white in the night.
Something drew Aurienne to the Stone. She walked with a sleepwalker’s plodding step towards it and ran her fingertips over the carvings on the plaster.
Healing iconography ornamented the lunar calendar that was chiselled into the Monafyll Stone: the serpent, the swan, the pestle, the healing hand.
There was no Haelan tācn on the healing hand; the Monafyll Stone predated the creation of the Orders by centuries.
The number seven recurred in concentric circles, in clusters of leaves, of stars.
The healing pilgrimage depicted on the stone was meant to be completed within seven moons.
Widdershins’ early translation notes were still pinned in place on the plaster. In a slow downwards motion, Aurienne traced the moons and the healing, unfurling the dusty translation notes as she went.
March, dream-laden—the early failure at the pond.
April—look through the shinbone of a hare—the Downs, another failure.
May—blackened sun at land’s end—the transcendent moment at the lighthouse.
Slowing of the progress of the rot. June—running waters cross—the Faerwundor.
A healed node. July—rainbow—the waterfall, the reversal of the demyelination.
August—waves draw you under—the isle, the storm, and Osric’s seith system cured.
The healing had been completed in six moons.
Aurienne’s fingers went to September’s harvest moon. She unravelled Widdershins’ translation note, curled upon itself with age. That hidden abode.
Had the healing been completed? What of this gaping wound in her chest? What of this grievous load on her soul? What of this sick regret?
Through the open window flew a moth. Like a feather, or a petal of white whorled with black, it landed upon the Stone, right next to Aurienne’s hand.
The thought occurred to her—absurd thought, absurd dream logic—that there might be a path forward here to heal her bloodied heart.
She sat at her desk and returned to the data.
For company, she summoned Cíele, who perched himself on her chair’s right arm.
Acts of Warranted Brutality surprised them both by settling upon the left one.
Between the being of white and the creature of dark, Aurienne read.
She read until dawn broke and the doves in the roof began to coo.
Where was the hidden abode?