Splinters of Scarlet

by Emily Bain Murphy

  Every night, I have to force away the images of Ingrid’s cold body again, and I can’t go to sleep until I’ve thoroughly examined my wrists.

  “It will go faster with three of us,” Jakob says kindly when he sees the look on my face, and all I can do is nod.

  That night I hide the money my father left me in the straw of my mattress. Then I strike a match and watch it flare against the candlewick. I bring the gemstone into the light, clutching it between my fingers.

  Touch the hasty threads my father sewed into the cloth.

  More people will die.

  I close my eyes, suddenly looking at my memories through a new lens. Through the lighted lens of this jewel.

  Because the night she died, my sister was worried.

  * * *

  I thought I understood why. She had a lot of things to worry about, after all. Losing the house, how we were going to pay for food. Dark circles had started to pool under her eyes from the nights she spent pacing the hallway when she was supposed to be sleeping. Most of all, she seemed worried that someone was going to come and take us away, possibly even separate us. She dropped her wooden spoon onto the stove with a clatter when the knock came on the door, and I knew that’s what she was thinking when she told me to hide.

  I stopped eating my porridge and froze. I just looked at her.

  “Hide,” she repeated. “Hide now, Marit, and don’t come out until I say.”

  I ran into the next room and opened the storage box under the window, where it smelled musty, where I used to play with my doll. I heard Ingrid clean my dirty bowl and then take a deep breath before she opened the door. I realized then that I was still holding my spoon.

  I wish we had just run. I wish I would have stayed with her. I wish I had wrapped my arms around her and told her how much I loved her.

  I don’t know how many men were there that night. At least three. I heard their heavy boots on the floor and their deep voices. I heard the way they questioned her, about Father’s job at the mines, about his assets and accounts, where he would keep something he wanted to safeguard. If he had left anything for us to sell, in order to take care of ourselves in the event of his death. Their voices sounded concerned but also urgent, and when Ingrid told them she knew nothing, the men acted as if she had done something wrong. They moved from room to room. Almost as if they were looking for something.

  The space where I hid myself was cramped, hot, and small, and I felt a choking in my throat and lungs that I soon recognized as fear. Growing. The longer they stayed. The closer their footsteps got to me. I heard my own heartbeat, thundering and warm in my ears. I sucked on the spoon, focused on the faint taste of wood, to drown it out.

  “You have a sister,” one of them said when they reached the room where I was hiding. I shifted in the box and hot, silent tears began to roll down my folded arms.

  “She’s not here,” Ingrid said quickly.

  “Where is she? We’d like to speak with her. Only a few questions.” I couldn’t see his face. He didn’t sound as if he was smiling. “Listen, girl. We’re not going to hurt you.”

  Through the slit of the box lid, I watched as Ingrid’s fists tightened next to her sides. I saw them curl into shells, until her knuckles turned as white as chalk. Her tell. The way I always knew she was using her magic.

  Her voice broke a little. “She’s only six,” Ingrid said softly.

  And suddenly, it was as though the very air in the room changed. I took the spoon from my mouth and rested it gently next to me. I risked opening the chest just a little more so I could see her face. I always thought my sister was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. I loved the way she squeezed her eyes so tight when she laughed, the small gap between her two front teeth, the way she would snap her fingers as a reward for a joke told well. But that night, for the briefest second, she looked so unbearably sad. Then she took a long, deep breath. Closed her eyes. And when she opened them again, they looked different. Fierce, determined.

  Resigned.

  “There is nothing here,” she said in a voice that sounded strangely calm. Her tone was carefree and almost soothing. “We know nothing. You spoke to both of us and searched our house but didn’t find anything. And you are leaving satisfied and never feel the need to come back.”

  Ingrid’s magic always meant being able to tell when other people were lying.

  But that night—she drew down from a deep, deep well. She used magic I never knew she had.

  She got them to believe the lies she was telling.

  They turned to leave, and I opened the lid enough to see that one of the men had a scar on his cheek in the shape of a fishhook. He looked almost dazed as he made his way to the door. Cramps spread through my limbs like fire in that box, as though I had been held under water for too long. I waited until I heard the door shutting behind them, the dead-bolting of the lock, before I emerged.

  But when I finally climbed out from my hiding place, Ingrid was staring down at her wrists.

  She looked up at me and my heart stopped in my chest. And I knew, even then, that moment was going to haunt me forever.

  Something was terribly wrong.

  “Marit,” she said, her eyes shadowing with fear. “I think . . .” she whispered desperately, “I think I went too far.”

  I looked down and saw the blue. Knitting like lace just under her wrists.

  “Ingrid!” I started to wail, knowing it was already too late, feeling my heart twist into a chain of spiked wire. I told my feet to run, hearing that garish nursery rhyme about ice and magic singing in my ears—and it made me hope that maybe if I could just start a fire, if I could get her warm, maybe it would be enough. My small fingers fumbled over the matches. I remember crashing toward our room, finding her favorite scarf, the one the color of violets. Wrapping it around her, and using all the blankets I could find, and lying down next to her. Pleading with her.

  I remember what it felt like. That too-quiet moment. When I realized she couldn’t hear me anymore.

  I hug myself now in my bed. I always thought those men came because they were trying to force us out. To sell the house for money, and put us in the orphanage. I thought that was why Ingrid sent them away, why she was so frightened.

  But now a new thought circles in my mind. I don’t let it land; I don’t look right at it, because it’s so sad that I can hardly bear it. But I can feel it, hovering nearby.

  I realize now that those men might have come from the mines.

  Maybe my father’s actions killed Ingrid. He took the stone, without permission, and the people from the mines came for it. Maybe they suspected that he’d stolen it. Maybe they were willing to do anything to get it back.

  My fingers falter over the stitch of his words. Maybe his choices actually got a lot of people killed.

  So Ingrid persuaded them to leave us alone. She made them go away.

  And then she died.

  * * *

  My heart cracks into tiny, delicate lines as I hold the jewel up to the light. What could possibly make this stone so important? Important enough that it caused so many deaths? Nothing I do is going to change the fact that my father and sister are dead. But this stone—what I do next with it—could put me in danger. It could hurt the Vestergaards—and as a result, every person in their employ. I glance across the flickering shadows toward Liljan, to the even beat of her breathing. Most of all, this stone could hurt Eve. And isn’t that the very opposite of why I came here in the first place?

  I think of my father, frantically trying to leave this message. I think of what it must have been like, to die in those mines. Did it happen quickly or did he suffer? Did he even have time to think of me? I swallow back a lump in my throat, my mind turning to Ingrid. I think of her fingers curled at her sides when those men came to our house. I think of the lengths she went to in order to protect my life.

  I pull out my petticoats. The stone glitters, warming in my palm.

  Who could have killed those min
ers, and why? Who would benefit from it?

  My needle is sharp silver in the candlelight.

  Aleks? · - · - · · · - · - · · ·

  Philip? · - - · · · · · · · · - · · · · · - - ·

  One of the other miners?

  Jakob said that in ten years, there has been little turnover in the mines. The men who came to my house the night Ingrid died might still even work there now. My teeth grate in a sudden shiver. But why would only some of the miners have been murdered, and the others spared?

  Almost all the other players have changed over the past ten years. King Frederick, Aleks Vestergaard, my father, and the other murdered miners are all dead. If there’s any chance of knowing what truly happened that day, I’ll have to find the people who overlap between then and now. Helene wouldn’t marry into the family for at least another two years. One of the only living links left is Philip.

  Nina’s footsteps creak on the stairs. I look at the list of dots and dashes running across my petticoat like rain.

  Was there anyone else who had something to gain that day? Or something to hide?

  Find the pattern.

  Connect the threads.

  I’m the seamstress, I think, blowing out my candle with a whoosh.

  Good thing that’s exactly what I do.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Three mornings later, after coffee and toast slathered with raspberry jam, the letter comes.

  Liljan finds Jakob and me, an envelope clutched in her hand. It’s sealed with red wax that’s as dark as crusted blood.

  “For you!” she says, handing it to Jakob. “Already! Dr. Holm must be really eager for an apprentice.”

  “Or really un-eager for one,” Jakob says, hesitating before he takes the letter between his long fingers.

  “I’ve even bought us a few moments without Brock or Nina snooping,” Liljan says.

  “How?” I ask.

  She wiggles her eyebrows. “I left Nina a trail of half-eaten candies that leads directly to his room.” She holds up a single finger, tilting her head to listen.

  “BROCK!” Nina shrieks a second later.

  “Right on cue,” Liljan says. “Now, what does it say?” She looks at Jakob’s face and claps. “Oh—you’ve read it already, haven’t you?”

  Jakob clutches the letter and flushes scarlet. “It says he’ll consider taking me on,” he says, his hands betraying a tremble when Liljan takes the envelope from him and breaks the wax seal. “But first he wants to meet with me.” His face is dawning with a grin. “To see if I have any promising ideas.”

  “Which, of course, you do,” Liljan says, reading the letter.

  “Now, how should I present those to him?” he murmurs to himself.

  “A song and dance number might be best?” Liljan ventures, cocking an eyebrow.

  “Or perhaps gruesome trivia,” I deadpan. Now I take the letter. “Gruesome trivia is Liljan’s favorite.”

  “I once knew of a woman who gave her own son smallpox,” Jakob says, dropping his voice to an eerie pitch. “She rubbed the powdered scabs of it into scratches on his skin.” He adds with an evil laugh: “On purpose.”

  “That’s horrible!” I say, recoiling, at the exact moment Liljan claps.

  “Ooh, yes!” she says gleefully, settling in. “I want more.”

  “Why would anyone ever do that?” I ask. I think of my father, how his large, worn mining hands looked holding my tiny doll teacup.

  “It was a very good thing, in fact,” Jakob says quickly. “It was variolation, the precursor to vaccines. People exposed themselves to deadened bits of smallpox through tiny scratches in their bodies, and it would eventually give them immunity. It made the body attack the smallpox instead of the smallpox attacking the body.” He looks at me and adds gently, “It actually saved her son’s life that way, and eventually many others.”

  He tells us of his other theories, of plants, poultices, and disinfectants, of blood transfusions and hot sulfuric springs, as we pilfer Nina’s key again. We climb the back stairs to the library and he tells us how the Firn was named—for the snow on top of mountains that melts only a little before freezing again, building up into a denser and denser ice. It reminded Dr. Holm of what magic does in our veins.

  Then we turn our attention to tucking the jewel books beneath our uniforms and squirrel them away, one at a time, to Jakob’s attic nook to pore over after our chores are finished.

  There are so many red stones. My fingers flip through the pages: ruby and carnelian, garnet and sunstone, bixbite and cinnabar. There are encyclopedic entries about them, but Jakob is also combing through the library for other things that could help us: legends or ancient folklore, medicinal purposes, anything that could explain why a red stone might be worth killing people to keep secret. Liljan turns from a page on Viking sunstones to flip through the notebooks Jakob has piled next to his desk. “Jakob, is one of your ideas being bled by leeches? Oh, for the love of figs, please don’t let that be the cure. Can’t you just invent some nice-flavored medicine for us?”

  “Oh, yes, Liljan, while I’m saving your life, I’ll try to make sure it tastes good,” Jakob says sarcastically. He runs a hand through his hair and adjusts his spectacles.

  “Listen, I’ll help you put these ghastly notebooks together into a beautiful, professional-looking volume of all your ideas,” Liljan says. “Marit can bind it”—I nod—“and you can bring it to your interview.”

  “And I’ll help you with your suit,” I offer. He gives me a pained look. “What?” I ask. “Your sleeves are far too short and the fabric is worn at the collar.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Thank you,” he says dryly.

  “Thank us by curing the Firn,” Liljan says. I nod in agreement.

  “And Jakob,” she says, batting her eyelashes. “When the time comes . . . my favorite flavor is licorice.”

  * * *

  Late in the afternoon, I part the strands of wisteria and walk through the coolness of the shaded corridor, the shadows inside turning from faint lavender to blackberry. When I reach the greenhouse door, I pause when I hear someone whispering. There’s the scuffle of a shoe and the sound of someone falling. Then a muttered curse.

  I silently open the door to find Eve practicing alone near the potted orange trees. I’m quiet enough that she doesn’t see me at first, trying a new step. She falls again, and then again. This time, when she picks herself up, she notices me.

  “Did you come for the plums?” I ask solemnly.

  Her face breaks into a grin. “It’s warm in here. And I like the way it smells. I mean, I suppose it’s not wool and mothballs,” she says, executing a tart spin, and I laugh.

  “Do you want to see what I’ve been working on?” She giggles, almost shy as she shows me what Helene’s been teaching her. I can see a difference already. There’s a new grace to the way she holds her hands and uncurls her spine, a power trembling in her muscles when she slowly extends her leg. She moves carefully amid the glass orbs, amid the smell of a fruit garden, the light filtering through the leaves as if we’re under water.

  I lean against the part of the wall not covered with moss. What will it do to us, I think painfully, if my father tried to bring down the Vestergaards? If he really was murdered—and if the Vestergaards really were somehow involved—then I want to take Eve and run as far away from here as we can.

  But what if that isn’t her choice? I ask myself. What if this is what she chooses?

  What would it do to us—to me—if she knew these people had murdered my father and she decided to stay with them anyway?

  Eve ever so briefly ascends to her toe and comes back down, and she beams at me.

  I clap. “You’ve gotten so good,” I say with delight. “Already.” I take a step toward her and embrace her in my servant’s uniform. “And you’re taller, I think.”

  “I’m pretty sure I stopped growing the day I turned eight.” She laughs, and the sound of it makes me feel guilty about th
e stone I have hidden in my pocket. That by keeping yet another thing from her, I’m doing something wrong.

  “Are you enjoying your lessons?” I ask, releasing her. “Learning the things you always wondered about where your mother is from?”

  “Yes,” Eve says. She brings her arms into an effortless arc over her head. “I am. But part of it feels strange to have to be taught things about her, and me. At the Mill, I often wondered, of course, but . . . is it strange that it feels a little scary now, to look?” She twirls, musing. “What if it changes how I feel? About myself?” Her body revolves so slowly, in such a tight, controlled circle, that it’s hard to believe. “Or who I thought I was.”

  My hand brushes against the jewel and I swallow.

  We say that the past anchors us, gives us roots and a foundation—all things that hold us down. But maybe that isn’t always a bad thing, I think. Maybe, sometimes, the past provides just enough substance to push off from and reach higher.

  Eve makes one last attempt at the complicated spin she’s learning, but instead of finishing she falls on one knee.

  “Careful,” I say, pulling her to her feet.

  “I am careful,” she insists, dusting herself off.

  “No,” I say delicately. “Just . . . be careful. Keep an eye out for Philip. All right?”

  There’s the first flicker of something in her eyes. “Why?”

  “I just don’t get a good feeling about him,” I say.

  There’s a flash of movement in the corner of my eye, and Brock emerges from a patch of growing bay leaves. I wonder how long he’s been standing there, listening. I turn toward him, heart pounding. He stands upright and at attention, his arms tucked behind his back.

  “Excuse me, Miss Vestergaard. Is this servant bothering you?” Brock asks.

  Eve whirls around. “Excuse me, Marit, is this servant bothering you?” she retorts, eyes flashing, her chest heaving with indignation. Brock takes a half step back, trying to mask the shock on his face, and it’s all I can do not to burst out laughing. Eve and I have always looked out for each other—us against everyone else. Once, when Sare made fun of some poppy seeds caught in Eve’s teeth, I ran my fingers along the thread of Sare’s buttons so that her dress popped open as soon as I stepped into the next room.