Chapter Seven #2
She wandered closer to the barn doors and peered outside.
The sunlight reflecting in the wide expanse of snow made her recoil.
Too harsh for her sensitive eyes, and nearly incomprehensible to her brain that had gotten used to darkness.
She shuffled back inside and spotted her cloak hanging on the peg, next to her daggers. Her heart leapt in her throat.
With reverent fingers, she pulled out Matteo’s journal and carried it to the workbench.
She found a candle, then settled with her legs tucked under her and her back to the wall.
She opened the weathered sketchbook. The words and drawings danced before her blurry vision.
She leaned over and stuck her face close to the pages, inhaling their musty scent.
They smelled like him, like ink and graphite pencil, like his clothes, his hair, his skin…
Seraphina swallowed heavily. The pressure in her head turned into a dull ache.
She was tired already, and all she wanted was to lie down and close her eyes.
But then sleep would follow, and she didn’t want that.
She was sleep-deprived, dreaming of coffee, which she hadn’t had since leaving Matteo’s family home in Tuscany.
That journey had been their last one. The end of his life, and her life as she’d known it.
His handwriting was small and flowery, interspersed with sketches of bones and lattice patterns.
He wrote his thoughts in an economical way, focusing on facts more than impressions.
Seraphina had been reluctant to read his journal, thinking he might’ve written about her.
His feelings for her. But as she turned the pages, she learned that Matteo hadn’t been a man of sentiment.
Much less a poet. The first half of the journal didn’t mention her, nor anything about his personal life.
Toward the end, she found one sentence that contained her name:
“Seraphina’s cheeks have grown considerably rosier since our arrival; the Tuscan sun, it seems, agrees with her.”
She let out a sob and pressed the notebook to her chest. She stayed like that for a few minutes, trembling, allowing herself to think about him, to conjure his image from memory.
Tall and handsome, with broad shoulders and a slim waist. His hair had been dark and long, gathered at his nape with a silk tie.
Strands always slipped out to frame his face.
His eyes, golden-brown and kind, had looked upon her with intensity in those last few days, after he’d been shunned by his family for wanting to marry her. Seraphina had never felt so chosen.
“Oh,” she whispered. “How I miss you.”
She dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve, which resulted in getting cream all over herself.
Now confident that Matteo hadn’t used his notebook like a private journal, she felt less guilty about reading it.
Most of what he’d written were observations about relics he was studying, their classifications and attributes, and how they could be cut to be added to lattices.
His sketches of patterns were harder for Seraphina to understand, as they weren’t her specialty.
When cutting and polishing bone shards, she followed instructions but didn’t fully grasp how they worked together when sewn.
She turned the pages and studied every drawing nonetheless, as it all had come from Matteo, and it was all she had left of him.
She reached the last written page and frowned at the evidence of torn pages before it.
Not a few; many. She ran her finger over the tattered edges poking out of the spine and narrowed her eyes at the tiny writing that followed the onslaught.
It was the most Matteo had written in one go without interrupting himself with sketches.
“I shouldn’t be writing this. I know it, and I’m trying to stop myself even as my pen glides over the page and words appear.
My jaw is clenched, my knuckles white as I grip the edge of the table and try to pry myself away, but the voices in my head are too loud, too insistent.
They’re driving me mad. I can barely hear my own thoughts, and when I sleep at night, I wake up with the horrible feeling that I’ve been talking while unconscious.
There’s no one there to hear, but still, I rush to the door of whatever inn we’re staying at and check the corridors.
By the mercy of God, they’ve been empty so far.
At home, in Tuscany, I had to ask Mother to put me in the most isolated wing of the villa.
She was all too happy to comply with my request, thinking I was choosing to sleep far from Seraphina’s room out of respect for the family.
No, but I can’t delay it a moment longer.
I’m writing in circles, hoping the urge will go away.
It only grows stronger. I have to write it, or I’ll say it out loud, I’ll find the nearest unfortunate soul and whisper it in his ear.
I know… I know that if I did it, silence would follow.
I haven’t known blessed silence in six months.
Six months of mental torture.
The toll is too great. I thought I could endure it, but it’s bringing me to heel.
Is Headmaster Wolff going insane, too? Back at Kr?henstein, is he pacing his chambers and tearing his hair out like I do every night before I fall, exhausted?
I must…
I shouldn’t…
If I’m careful, nothing will happen. I’ve written it down before, a dozen times, perhaps, ripped the pages immediately and thrown them in the fire.
As long as no one is around to read over my shoulder and I have a fire near, it’s safe to unburden myself.
It only lasts for a few days, then I must do it again, or I’m afraid I’ll slam my head into a wall, over and over, until my skull cracks open. ”
Stop!
Something at the back of Seraphina’s mind screamed at her. She couldn’t even blink. Her eyes were glued to the page, following the lines of text, her brain absorbing Matteo’s words greedily, like a sponge.
Stop!
The compulsion was like nothing she’d ever felt before.
The pull to use the vomer bone? Insignificant.
Right now, she could dig it out of her pocket and throw it across the barn for all she cared.
She’d stopped breathing, and she knew she wouldn’t start again until she’d reached the end of the page, until she owned every detail of the secret Matteo was whispering to her from beyond the grave.
His grave was the bodies of revenants.
Stop!