Chapter 6
Peter’s family lived in the Grey Cottage, the old servant quarters near the back gate.
There were four of them left. Uncle Cyrus and his two sisters were blooded. His brother was dead, and never mentioned. Peter’s mother had run away as a teenager, returned to the fold, then botched her first assignment. Now she worked on the family cars with Uncle Orrin.
Cyrus taught pain resistance, and was in charge of buying nearby farms when they failed. His nickname among the landowners of Upper Falls was Reaper.
I found him in Peter’s room, filling boxes with my cousin’s old sports gear, for return to the family stores. All around were bags stuffed with Peter’s pottery, a few scraps of fabric from last Quilting Day.
“Jessica, welcome home.”
I bowed a little. “Thank you, Uncle. May I help?”
He pointed—on the bed was a box of hand wraps and boxing gloves. The wraps were a tangled wad. Peter had always been careless with equipment, one of the smaller demerits on his ledger.
I sat on the bare mattress and pulled the box onto my lap.
“Your provost is here,” he began. “He was kind enough to bring us Peter’s things.”
Not so much kind as prudent. After generations of students, of new buildings, of improvements—the Shakespeare garden, the climbing wall, the archery field—we legacy families had made Helshire our own. Personal service was expected.
“There’s something Peter would’ve wanted you to have.” Cyrus gestured at the desk.
Splayed across it was a collage of my cousin’s personality—animal bones, a handful of stolen watches.
His knife blades gleamed; his textbooks were in disrepair.
The rabbit’s foot from his successful, extravagant mors curae was still on its keychain, the fur ragged from years in his pocket.
In the center of the mess were his climbing gloves and chalk bag.
“You must see what I mean,” Cyrus said. He took two steps toward the desk. When he turned back to me, a leather-sheathed knife was in his hand.
“Ziggy,” I said.
“So you remember.”
“Yes.” Ziggy was absurdly large for a throwing knife: a ten-inch blade, two inches wide, impossible to carry hidden. Bad throws had dented its crossbar, scuffed its rosewood handle. But Peter had loved the sumptuous scimitar curve, the way it splintered plywood targets.
Throwing knives are impractical, with a tendency to bounce and break. As weapons, they are pure theater.
Ziggy was an opera.
“You taught him so much,” Cyrus said.
Not enough. “He was a dedicated student. He’d throw until his arm gave out, then keep going with his left.”
“You were his savior.” Cyrus extended the knife toward me, sheath first. “Please.”
“Thank you,” I said, reaching out. But when I took hold of the sheath, Cyrus pulled back, drawing the knife.
Now he had a naked blade, and I had a piece of leather. I was also sitting down, an unwieldy box on my lap, a skein of wraps tangling my left hand. Always first with the mind.
“Uncle Cyrus.”
“Do you remember his riddles?” he asked, eyes bright. “The silly ones, when he was small?”
Beside me was a pair of boxing gloves. On the wall a recurve crossbow—unloaded—and a machete. A half dozen of Peter’s smaller throwing knives lay on the desk, unsheathed and ready, but my uncle was between me and them.
Words were my best option.
“He loved tricking people. Riddles are the only way a little kid can trick an adult.”
“There was one about falling,” Cyrus said.
I shook my head.
“He must’ve told it a thousand times.” The unwavering knife was level with my throat. “It went, ‘Why did the blind man fall down the well?’ ”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you figure it out?”
A well, a blind man. Not much to work with.
But the meaning was clear—I’d led Peter, unseeing, to his death.
“I don’t remember.”
“That’s the problem with riddles,” Cyrus said. “It’s not like digging a grave, where all it takes is enough shovelfuls of dirt. You either see a riddle’s answer all at once, or you’ve got nothing.”
I had nothing—except another of Peter’s riddles buzzing in my head:
Why did I bury my flashlight?
Because the batteries were dead.
“Keep trying,” Cyrus said. The knife point began to metronome back and forth, as if counting down.
I’d managed to free my hand from the boxing wraps, but nothing useful was in reach. “I don’t know, Uncle.”
He shook his head—this wouldn’t do at all.
“Think,” he said.
Why was the arrow afraid?
Because its cousin was a quiver.
Cyrus couldn’t blame me for killing Peter: Grandmother’s orders. But forgetting him was unforgivable.
“Why did the blind man fall down the well, Jessica?”
And there it was.
“Because he couldn’t see that well,” I said.
Cyrus laughed, low and soft, with his mouth closed. His eyes were brighter than ever. “See, Jessica? I knew it was in there, with all your other memories of him. He’s still in there.”
“He’ll always be—”
“The chalk bag,” Cyrus said.
I blinked once, my brain resetting. Another riddle.
“That one?” I asked, looking at the desk.
“Yes. Peter left handprints all the way up. A single set of marks, to show that he was climbing alone.”
“He was.” My hands were clean that night.
“But his chalk bag was in his dorm, not with his body. As you can see.”
Cyrus stepped aside—the bag sat there on the desk. No blood, no damage from a seven-story fall.
“Ah,” I said.
Later that night, I’d hidden my bag from Faraday, but I shouldn’t have taken it home. I should have dropped it on Peter’s body.
“Where did the chalk on his hands come from?” Cyrus asked.
“From me. He showed up without any.”
“That was kind of you, giving him a chance.” Slowly, he lowered the knife to his side.
Silence was safest, but I had to ask. “Did you know ahead of time?”
“I voted on it,” he said.
“Oh.” It took me a second. “Grandmother puts things to a vote?”
“In cases like this, yes. And she allowed me an indulgence. Stand up.”
I obeyed, letting the box slip to the floor.
Cyrus lifted the knife again, and drew the edge across his thumb.
“With this blood, I mark you a true Morton, the last Jessica.” He smeared his thumb down my left cheek, then my right. “Forever one of us.”
“My last tears,” I said. “These tears of blood.”
“Fides sine cura,” he ended.
And I felt it there, in my dead cousin’s room, the final settling of the mors curae—the death of care. My rabbit, twelve years ago, and now Peter.
At last, everything was certain. No more conversations with dead girls. All the other Jessicas, finally at rest.
Cyrus wiped the knife, then handed it to me. “Is there anything else of his you’d like to keep?”
I looked around the room, and old memories of Peter rushed in.
Long stretches together in absolute silence, standing still enough that birds would alight on us.
Finding dead animals in the fields, the barns, the forest, prizes for the maggoting room.
Seeing the gristle and liquids of the natural world, knowing its smells.
The gifts he’d give me afterward.
“His bone collection,” I said.
For the first time, Cyrus smiled. And it struck me that I’d loved Peter, even as I let him fall.
That was what the death of care allowed.