by Mary Weber
I run back over the scene in my mind. Did I do something to indicate such a thing? But the only point that sticks out is Mr. King’s insinuation that my work was regrettable even as he seemed to be suggesting his support of Vincent’s interest in me.
I try not to let either nip at my pride and, grabbing the lantern by the door, I strike a match to light it, then jot a note for Da to check on Lute’s brother when he gets a chance. Then I slip to my parents’ door to peek in on them. Da has his body wrapped around Mum’s, who looks twice as old as her thirty-eight years. Her breathing is labored and uneven. Da’s is rough and heavy, hinting at the hours he’s spent leaning over the medical tables and patients during the past twenty years.
I tiptoe across the floor and kiss both their heads, then turn to go when a discoloration on Mum’s upper chest catches my eye. I lean closer. It’s a bruise. Deep purple and black.
It happens. Everyone gets them. It doesn’t mean her sickness is advancing.
All the same, I skim her neck and face—only to land on a speck of blood on her pillow. I hold the lamp as near as possible without disturbing her and study the dark spot that’s no bigger than the size of a tiny merrymarch flower petal. Then trace it up to another matching speck beside her lips.
I pull back and try to hold my breath so the cry launching up my throat can’t emerge. Then scour her skin for any other spots. There are none.
There don’t need to be. Because my mind is already explaining away any similarities between her situation and the dead people I’ve seen and heard about today.
She has bruising, but the others didn’t. Her disease is different. Slower. I carefully back out of the room and shut the door behind me. And lean against it until my shaking chest can breathe evenly. Then head for the cellar stairs.
At the bottom I turn the lantern wick up and let my eyes adjust to the light before I stride over to the shelf where the rat cages are lined up against the left wall. The rats rustle and squeak as I walk past, until I reach the end, where Lady is kept. The metal pen is quiet. I tap it. No movement.
I hold the lamp up and peer through the tiny bars. Lady’s small body lays stiff as a board with a tiny dribble of blood dried around her mouth. This time I don’t hold in the cry. I let it rip up my throat in a quiet tearing of earth and soul as I slip on a pair of gloves and reach in to pull her out. I check her. Her limbs, her gums, her eyes that are staring lifelessly up at me. She’s dead.
Not just dead—she’s bleeding from the mouth dead. Meaning, not only was our cure worthless, but something’s very wrong. In the past ten months, the disease has never presented with the blood before.
It’s a coincidence. Or maybe there’s another virus going around that just happened to hit here too.
Or . . . the crippling disease could be changing.
Shutting my eyes, I stick Lady’s body back into the cage, then pull away to stare at the room. My own blood begins to boil at the implications.
After a moment I walk to the microscope Da and I were using earlier. He’s set new glass dishes beside it, each with what appear to be fresh blood droplets and labels. I select the one Da marked as Lady’s, taken from a new draw two hours ago, and place it on the tray, then hone in the lens on it. I frown and switch it out for the dish labeled as my mum’s, also dated two hours ago, as a sick sensation rises in my stomach.
Something is off. These samples look different. I shove down the fear and, after a moment, replace her dish with the one containing the tree oil man’s blood from this morning. But I already know what it shows.
I zero the scope in until the cells come into focus. Then again. Then again as horror fills my chest.
According to this, Mum’s and Lady’s diseased blood hasn’t just been accelerating.
It now matches the dead man’s.
Their illness is morphing.
I glance up at the cages, then at the overhead ceiling boards—one of which creaks right where Mum and Da’s room is. And bite back the vomit rising in my throat as the soaring hope I’d felt just hours ago crashes to the floor. I rip off the gloves as my mind spins and the weight of what this means sets in.
It means we’ve failed.
It means the cure I’d hoped we’d finally found was nothing all along.
I turn back to the cage to stare at Lady’s stiff body as the realization hits me. This will be Mum’s fate too. To die quickly. Trapped in an immobile body, suffocated by her own lungs, without the ability to escape.
Trapped.
Just like Lady.
“They’re only doing it because they feel trapped and need to be heard.” Lute’s words flare in the back of my mind.
The fishermen. The rioters.
My mum.
My eyes fly open. I reach for the shelf above the cage and, with a quick shove, swipe its contents on the floor—the books and tins and bones. Then turn around and glare at what else I can destroy, because suddenly I know why the pub’s men were lashing out so recklessly tonight. They’re scared of choices being made for them that will sentence their families to a life—or death—they have no control over.
It’s the same reason I got angry at the Uppers in Uncle Nicholae’s study.
“You’re a lucky girl, Miss Tellur. Not everyone has such an opportunity. I expect to see good things come from it.”
What opportunity? What choices? What life?
We can’t even get anyone to listen to us voicing our needs.
“I rather believe you about the need for varied voices,” that strange Mr. Kellen had said. Then he asked, “And what exactly would you have them do differently?”
I glance at the slab we use to examine the dead. What would I do differently?
I’d stop pretending Da and I will find a cure down here using our rudimentary equipment and my inexperienced skills.
I’d make them listen to our town’s need.
I’d heal my mum.
I’d pursue the real future I want—a future that isn’t just including me in someone else’s plan, but that is for me. I’d—
My gaze catches on the Labyrinth Letter that’s floated lifelessly to the floor from the shelf I shoved the books off of. I pick up the piece of parchment and scan it, even though I’ve had every word memorized since the age of five.
* * *
All gentlepersons of university age (respectively seventeen to nineteen) are cordially invited to test for the esteemed annual scholarship given by Mr. Holm toward one full-ride fellowship at Stemwick Men’s University. Aptitude contenders will appear at nine o’clock in front of Holm Castle’s entrance above the seaside town of Pinsbury Port on the evening of 22 September, during the Festival of the Autumnal Equinox.
For Observers: Party refreshments will be provided at intermittent times. Watering facilities available at all times. Gratitude and genial amusement are expected. (Those who fail to comply will be tossed out at our amusement.)
For Contestants: Those who never risk are doomed never to risk. And those who’ve risked previously will be ousted should they try again.
For All: Mr. Holm and Holm Manor bear no responsibility, liability, or legal obligation for any harm, death, or partial decapitation that may result from entering the examination Labyrinth.
Sincerely,
Holm
* * *
My mind pricks. Something about the letter niggles at me as I return to the opening sentence. “All gentlepersons of university age.”
Not gentlemen?
Gentlepersons.
“Rhen?”
I jump and drop the letter on the table as the door creaks and a light illuminates the steps as well as the entirety of Da’s face. He rubs a hand across his eye. “Thought you’d be home later.”
I shake my head. “I went to Sow’s pub to see the boys.”
He frowns and tilts his head. “You went into town? You’re all right though, yes?”
“They put restrictions on the fishing industry.” I set my fingers on the table in
front of the letter. “They’re limiting how much the men can fish.”
“I heard.” He’s still analyzing me with his gaze that’s ensuring I’m okay as well as taking in the fact that I’ve not even changed or begun baking. “It was all anyone was talking about when I went to see the Strowes.”
“How can they do it, though? Just—decide something like that for everyone. Especially when it won’t even affect them.” I glance around. “And—and Lady.” I turn toward her cage. “Da, Lady’s dead.”
He descends the stairs and sets the lantern on the table beside mine. “I know.”
“So what about the Strowe girl? Is she still alive?”
In the lamplight his eyes glisten and turn damp. “She became incapacitated today.”
Exactly. Of course she did. I press my fingers harder into the table until I can feel the sting of my blood pulsing—until I can feel the life that is wasting away here—and whisper, “And that’s okay with everyone? We’re just supposed to live with that?” I jerk a hand toward the stairs and whisper, “And what about Mum? Did you see the blood on her pillow tonight? Did you hear her breathing? What is wrong with the medical community that they can just let this happen?”
Da’s face goes two shades of pale and his gaze flits to the stairs. He obviously didn’t see Mum’s blood. My heart implodes, and I throw both hands in the air. “Da, what are we doing?”
He still hasn’t moved. “We’ll get it figured out, Rhen. I promise.”
“No, we won’t! Or at least not soon enough.” I gesture at the vials and dishes on the floor around us, then at the tiny room. “Not with this rudimentary setup!” And I’m yelling, and I don’t even know why I’m yelling at him because it’s not his fault. He’s not causing this, but I can’t stop.
“No offense, but you’ve been telling me for years we don’t have the supplies to test the methods like we need to. To even try to create new medicines for simple infections. We can’t even get the dead tissues we need without breaking the law!”
He blinks and studies me, then sits down on the low stool, and his body suddenly looks old. More than that, it’s his stance. Weary. Defeated. I can see it in his eyes. “I definitely don’t think we should give up, but I agree that we may be at the mercy of the state-supported researchers on this one, Rhen.”
“Wait . . .” My voice falls. “Are you serious?” A rush of warmth fills my vision, and I blink it away. “Da, what are you saying?”
He looks sadly at me. “I saw Lady when I got home. I just hadn’t got around to moving her.”
“Okay, and?”
“I assume you saw the blood samples I took this evening,” he says quietly. “The salesman was fine a week ago.” Da’s tone goes scratchy. “And your mum’s blood has altered to look more like his. Rhen, the disease is morphing, and I . . . I think I’m out of ideas on this one.”
What is he saying? Oh hulls, what the bleeding fury is he saying? That he’s given up hope? That he doesn’t believe we’ll find a cure? Did he ever believe? Or was he just letting me think I could become something more—and that we were actually making a difference?
I look around as hot tears fill my eyes. This has all been a joke—one in which we’ve been playing make-believe and pseudoscience. I’m not a scientist in training. I’m a child entertaining fancies about who we are and what we can do.
His eyes are soulful. “I know what you’re fearing, and it’s not true. I still believe someone will eventually get there. I just don’t know that it’ll be us. But I don’t want you to give up hope.”
“Hope for what? That Mum will miraculously recover? That enough people will die so the researchers will finally look into it? Or maybe that parliament will fund them? None of that is hope—it’s dependency, and it’s pathetic.”
“I know, but other than keep trying there’s nothing else we can do. Someday this disease will reach their doors, and we’ll hopefully have something to show them. At that point they’ll pay attention. Right now it’s just too new. Too unknown. So until then we keep doing what we know. We’ve already created an antibiotic for the weak fever, and you’ve almost cracked the vaccine for the lung-fluid illness. Even if . . .” His voice fades off, as does the hope I’ve built our entire past six months around. Hope that he and I could save Mum. That we were doing something bigger—something more worthwhile with our time than simply watching people slip away into a sickness we don’t even have a proper name for.
I grit my teeth and sound like Jake and his father and all the men down at Sow’s. “Maybe we should bring it to their doors.”
His head jerks up so fast I realize I’d forgotten for a moment he’s still in his late thirties. “Young lady, that is completely out—”
I’m already shaking my head. “I’m not talking of infecting them, Da. I’m not insane.”
He slows. Eyes me. “I think you’d better explain then.”
I don’t know how to explain. Because I don’t even know what I’m thinking exactly. I look around. “I just—I’m saying, maybe we need their clout and position.”
He stares at me blankly, as if my insinuation is not getting through.
“We need the Uppers’ benefits, Da.”
“You’re going to pursue matrimony with Vincent then.”
“No. I’m saying we need their positions more than we need them. I’m saying we need to become them.” My words erupt faster along with my breath as the idea takes root. “Last week you said that if you had even half their supplies and technology, you’d be able to figure this thing out. Well, if I attended one of the universities, I’d have access to the labs like you once did. I could help Mum and become a real scientist. You’ve always said I was cut out for this. So what if I am? What if I can attend university like the men do? What if—?”
“Oh, my dear Rhen.” He stands up and walks toward me as one does a wounded puppy or an angry morning bird, then smiles down with all the love I think one person can probably have for a child. “If your mum and I could want anything for you, it would be to see such a thing in my lifetime. But as much as I applaud where your mind is, you and I both know it can’t happen. They’d never let you in. And as much as it hurts me to admit it, we could never afford it, even if they did.”
“But if I could pass the qualifying exams, they’d have to consider it at least.”
“I don’t just mean they won’t let you in. I mean they would never allow you to even test for it. Society isn’t quite ready for such strides, my girl.”
“But what if they didn’t know it was me? What if—?” I wave a hand. “What if I went in as a boy?”
He chuckles. “Your lack of conventional thought is what would make you a great scientist.” He pats my cheek and chuckles. “And if anyone could pull off such a thing, my vote would be on you. But it wouldn’t work. They check every name, every family, every detail of an applicant’s life—as they should—before they allow them to take the examinations.”
My fingers fall to the Labyrinth Letter along with my gaze. “Unless there was a different test altogether I could enter.”
He puts his hands on the sides of my head and snorts before he presses my ears and releases me. “You are a specific kind of species, my girl. A strange and terrifying beauty of mind.” He kisses my forehead and pats my cheek again. Then blinks quickly and tries to clear his throat. “But I need to go check on your mother.” He glances toward Lady’s cage, and with a heavy sigh heads for the stairs.
I watch him go.
He’s just reached the bottom ledge when I quietly ask, “Do you think she’s getting worse? Mum, I mean.”
He clears his throat again but doesn’t answer—and he doesn’t have to. His slumped shoulders and tired step are clear as anything. He starts up the stairs and doesn’t turn around, doesn’t look back, and something tells me that if he did, his face would be wet. So I leave him to his dignity and watch him slowly ascend the steps as my face dampens with my own grief-stricken tears.
When h
e is gone, I turn back to the Labyrinth Letter and stand tapping it for a full three minutes.
“You’re a lucky girl, Miss Tellur. Not everyone has such an opportunity. I expect to see good things come from it.”
I shake my head clear, then check the letter again. “All gentlepersons . . .”
I pick up the bone-cutting shears and turn them over exactly four times in my hands.
Then clench my jaw and lift the blades to my loosened, braided bun. And make one snip. Then another.
And watch my locks of hair begin to fall around me onto the ground.
11
The morning of the autumnal equinox dawns, not with the normal bustle of creaking carts but with the sound of a rooster’s strangled crow piercing my thin glass windowpane.
An omen, Mrs. Mench would call it. A sign that more death is on the horizon.
I squint. Of course it is—death occurs every day. And yet an unwelcome shiver scuttles across my skin anyway.
I close my eyes and let the dim grey light creep through my dirty windows and across my eyelids and the thin, frayed quilt cocooned around me, waiting for the golden rays to emerge with their warm courage. Instead, a tap tap tap on the roof right above my head picks up, and I peel one lid open to glare at the glass—only to find a drizzle has begun. Another bad sign. I shiver again and shove my head beneath the blankets until a soft squeak on my bedroom floorboard jerks me from the covers.
“Rhen,” someone hisses.
A ghost cloaked in shadow stands at the foot of my bed.
“Are you awake?” the voice chirps.
I peer through the grey haze, then bite down on my tongue as the outline of Seleni’s nose and chin emerges into view.
Oh for Caldon’s sake— “What are you doing here, Sel?”
“Scoot over before I freeze to death.” She shoves me over to make room to slide in beside me. I yelp. Her body is so cold and damp that by the time she’s done situating herself among the blankets, I’m frozen.
