by Ted Sanders
“It helped save me during the fire,” Chloe said, unsure why she was bothering to explain.
“Can I have it?”
Chloe shrugged. “Why not? It’s useless now. And every time you look at it, you can remember how it was there when you weren’t.”
Isabel tucked the raven’s eye into a pocket without comment. Chloe, meanwhile, struggled to keep her bearings. She found herself wishing for Horace, for his steadfast voice and his logical way of looking at the world. If anyone could make sense of this terrible moment, a moment she did not want but had so often imagined, it was Horace.
Isabel sat down on the far end of Chloe’s bed. “You seem to have a lot you want to say to me,” she said. “But nothing to ask?”
Chloe let that one sink like a stone through all the questions she’d wanted to put to her mother over the years, all the things she’d asked her father, all the answers she’d tried to give Madeline. So much, so thick, all so old and dusted and worn down. She went back to the night before, to the moment she’d first recognized that fierce face, so infuriatingly like her own. She went back to the first thought she’d had, and said it out loud now:
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Isabel sighed. “Oh Clover, I came back for you. For you and Madeline and your dad. I’ve been looking for you all these years.”
“All seven?” Chloe snapped, and then winced at how readily the exact number sprang out, as if she’d been counting. As if she’d been keeping track.
“No. Not all seven. I traveled, trying to come to terms with what I did. I worked for a while in various places. Never very far away. But then I came back to find you.”
“It doesn’t seem like it would be that hard to find someone, if you really wanted to.”
“You moved,” Isabel said, as if that explained eveything. “Dad left his job.”
“He lost his job.”
“And he changed your name, from Burke to Oliver.”
“That was my idea,” said Chloe. Isabel frowned sadly. “What, are you really surprised that I didn’t want to keep the name of the woman who abandoned me? Abandoned all of us?”
“Maybe it would help if I told you why I left.”
Chloe’s stomach fluttered. “I can’t imagine how, but knock yourself out.”
Isabel folded her legs beneath her on the bed and spoke softly, looking Chloe in the eye. “When I was your age, I worked for the Wardens as a Tuner. I was . . . good at it. I was the only one who could use Miradel—the wicker harp.”
Chloe was surprised to hear Isabel telling the truth. She was equally surprised to hear that the harp had a name—Horace’s mom hadn’t mentioned that. And now a watery memory floated to the surface of Chloe’s mind. An old photograph of her mother and father lying in a hammock together, looking young and happy. And around her mother’s neck, a round wicker pendant. The harp. Aggravatingly, Chloe realized a hunger was gnawing at her quietly now, a hunger for answers she’d never gotten. But she’d be damned if she was going to show it. “I heard a different story,” she said. “I heard you couldn’t control the harp.”
“Sometimes there would be . . . events. Things I didn’t intend. Usually it was no big deal.”
“Severing people, no big deal.”
Isabel winced. “I was getting better,” she insisted. “I needed help. Mr. Meister could have helped me, but it wasn’t fair—” Furrowing her brow, she caught herself, rethinking her words. “It was difficult for me, because—”
“Because a harp isn’t a Tan’ji. You’re not Tan’ji.”
Isabel bared her teeth.
“You’re not,” Chloe insisted. “You can use it, but the harp isn’t even really yours.”
“So they always said,” Isabel snapped. “They reminded me every day. I could use it when they allowed me to. Miradel was on loan to me, like a library book.” She gestured at the books on Chloe’s desk.
Under the circumstances, Chloe didn’t want to admit that these library books weren’t exactly on loan. “The Wardens didn’t let you keep the harp because you couldn’t really control it.”
“No, because that was the rule.” She thrust an angry, rigid finger at the floor. “And because of the rule, I couldn’t master my instrument properly.”
Chloe, of course, was no fan of authority. Much to her dismay, she felt a flicker of anger on her mother’s behalf, knowing very well how frustrating the Wardens’ rules could be. “So you stole it.”
“Yes. Maybe you understand why.”
“I don’t,” Chloe lied. “And I definitely don’t understand why Mr. Meister would let you keep it after you stole it.”
“Oh, he knew where I was. I was only twelve. He could have come for me.”
Chloe had no idea whether that was true or not. “So why didn’t he?”
Isabel shrugged. “Probably he was afraid. And he should have been.” Her tone was icily casual and tinged with arrogance. “So instead, he banished me. I was excommunicated. I felt it happen.” She glanced down at the floor. “It was . . . very bad at first. I’d been to the Warren dozens of times, but after they banished me it was like the sight of it had been erased from my mind. I could picture the neighborhood, but not the academy itself. And even if I’d walked right past it, I never would have seen it.”
It occurred to Chloe that Isabel didn’t seem to know how she’d been banished. She didn’t seem to know about the spitestone. “But now thanks to April, you’re back,” Chloe pointed out, pressing. “Lucky you.”
Isabel twisted her pinky ring. “But I’m not back. Even as I sit here, right above the Great Burrow, I couldn’t find my way down.”
“Really?” Chloe asked. “Are you saying you could roam the halls of the academy day and night, and still never find the passageway that leads down into the Warren?”
“Is it even a passageway?” asked Isabel. “I have no memories. I can barely even summon up the idea.”
Chloe managed not to glance at the black key on her desk. She wondered if Isabel was even able to see it. “Well, shucks, if only you were Tan’ji,” she said, making her voice saccharine sweet. “Your harp is down in the Warren, right? The Wardens could never stop you from finding your way to your instrument again—if you really had the bond.” She frowned poutily, feigning sadness.
Isabel stopped fussing with her ring and folded her hands into her lap. “True enough,” she said flatly.
“I’m still waiting to hear why you left us. Why you left my dad.”
Isabel took a long time responding. “I was very young when I met your dad,” she said at last. “Very young when I had you. We were happy—genuinely happy. I still had Miradel.”
“And you taught yourself how to use it.”
Isabel waggled her head ambiguously. “I tried. But there was no real work for me to do, no Tanu to practice on. A harp is pointless without a Tanu there to manipulate. There was no one to teach me how to get better, no one to help fix me. Even so, life was good. Madeline was born. And then, when she was about a year old, and you were five . . .” She trailed off, as if into some sad reminiscence, but Chloe caught something unmistakable in Isabel’s expression, a familiar spark Chloe recognized all too well. Anger. And not anger at herself, but anger at some outside thing, some unexpected invader.
And suddenly, like a plane emerging from the clouds, she understood. Chloe rose to her feet, clutching at her own chest. “The dragonfly,” she whispered.
Isabel nodded slowly. “Yes. My own daughter—Tan’ji. I knew you had the potential, of course I did, but I never imagined . . . not so young.”
“Did you take me to the House of Answers?”
“I have no idea what that means. You were out with Dad. He lost you—you were always wandering off. And when he found you again, you had that.” She nodded at the Alvalaithen, and Chloe couldn’t tell if it was admiration or disgust in her voice. “When you came home,” Isabel continued, “I felt you before you even came in the house. I waited for you. You we
re bursting with power, even though you had no idea what the dragonfly did yet. And the moment I laid eyes on you and your Tan’ji, without thinking or trying or—god, I swear, even wanting—I severed you. I severed you clean. You broke into tears.”
Chloe had no memory of this, none at all, but a slow realization was beginning to dawn. “You couldn’t control yourself,” she said.
Isabel took a deep breath. “No. But I didn’t see the danger, not at first. I learned soon enough—oh yes I did, as soon as you came through the Find.” She interrupted herself with a bitter laugh and then continued in a near whisper: “A daughter with the power to walk through walls. A mother who can sever that power at any moment—even when she doesn’t mean to. It . . . it couldn’t last.”
Chloe felt like she was touching the falkrete again, like the world she knew was splitting itself in two. She clutched the Alvalaithen so tightly it cut into her skin. “The accident,” she whispered.
“I hung on for a year,” Isabel said grimly. “There were a lot of accidents in that time. Most of them weren’t my fault.”
“There was only one that mattered.”
Isabel closed her eyes and let her head fall back. After a long, silent minute she spoke, her voice soft and tentative and strangely sweet. “I felt you outside,” she explained. “Drinking deeply from the dragonfly. I did my best to ignore it like always. And then suddenly—nothing to do with me—you were screaming. Screaming terribly. I ran outside and there you were, on your knees in the grass. Only you weren’t on your knees. The dragonfly’s wings were whirring and you were buried. Sinking into the ground. You were clinging to a lawn chair and it was sinking too, like the earth had turned to quicksand right under you. Like it wanted to swallow you up.”
Chloe’s mouth went dry, remembering. Dark dreams had plagued her ever since that day, a day she’d relived so many times she was no longer sure which of its horrors were real. “And then?”
“I panicked. The veins had you, and it was like they were trying to drown you.” Isabel lifted a single shoulder, a seemingly thoughtless half shrug. “And then I . . . took them away.”
“You severed me, you mean. With my legs half underground.”
Isabel hesitated, then gave a single, quick nod.
“That’s how I broke my legs.”
“Yes. And worse. Your screams . . . changed. From terror to pain. I let go of the veins right away and the dragonfly came back to life. You crawled out of the earth—I don’t know how.” She shook her head wonderingly. “I just watched. I was afraid to touch you. You crawled toward me, and your legs . . .”
“I was six.”
Isabel laughed harshly. “You say that like I don’t know! Like I didn’t have to call an ambulance for my six-year-old daughter. Like I didn’t have to invent a story to explain two broken shins—broken ankles, broken feet. Like I didn’t have to hold little Maddy while we watched you push bits of dirt and stone out of your torn flesh. Like I didn’t have to call your father to explain what I’d done.”
Chloe breathed hard, trying to imagine the scene she could barely remember. “And then you left us.”
“Yes. To protect you.”
“Because you couldn’t control your harp, you left us.”
“Yes.”
“Instead of giving up the harp. Instead of burning it to ashes.”
Isabel flinched. “I tried to give it up. I tried. But I could never have destroyed it. Even then.”
“You mean you wouldn’t,” Chloe snarled. “Did you try taking Miradel back to the Wardens?”
“The Wardens wouldn’t have helped me. They didn’t want to fix me.”
Chloe shot to her feet. “Fix you? You weren’t the one that was broken! I was in a wheelchair for four months. You were gone before I could walk again. I thought—” Chloe blinked away sudden tears, furious and fuming with a rage she thought might never die out. “I thought it was my fault you left. Because of what I did.”
“I never wanted you to think that, Clover. I just—I couldn’t stay.”
“No, no. Screw that.” She leaned forward savagely, cutting out her words as if made of ice. “You chose the harp over us! Over your family. You left us all because you couldn’t—you wouldn’t—give up the harp.”
“I was young. And it wasn’t easy. Could you give up the dragonfly?”
“I’m Tan’ji!” Chloe shouted. “You’re just a Tuner!”
“I’m more than a Tuner,” Isabel insisted grimly. “And Miradel is more than just another harp. She can’t be passed around to whichever Tuner drops by—if there even is another Tuner who can use her.”
Chloe stared in disbelief. “So what do you think you are, exactly? Sorta kinda Tan’ji? Like a half Keeper or something?”
“Whatever I am can be fixed. I know it. Miradel belongs to me.”
“Obviously not, because she’s down in the Warren and you can’t even find her. Just like you couldn’t find me. The truth is, nothing belongs to you. Nothing belongs to you because you are nothing. You left because you could’ve killed me, and—news flash—you aren’t back here now to make it right. You didn’t come back for me, or for Dad, or Madeline. You came back because you think the Wardens can fix you. Like they can turn you into something you never were, and never will be.”
Isabel leapt to her feet. She stepped up to Chloe, her eyes blazing with a ferocity Chloe had never seen in anyone before, not even herself. “You don’t know what I am!” Isabel roared through her teeth. “You don’t know what I’ve been! You think you know Tuners? You think you understand because you’re an almighty Tan’ji? I suppose you’ve been told how Tuners are recruited, then. How a person becomes a Tuner to begin with. Explain it to me, mighty Keeper. Tell me all about myself and how I got to where I am today.”
Chloe practically strangled the river of doubt that trickled through her thoughts now. She was so angry and so bewildered that she could barely see. “You got to where you are today,” she hissed, “by being the crappiest mother imaginable.”
And then, suddenly, strong hands were on her—not grasping, not shoving, but pushing her gently and irresistibly away from Isabel. Her father, tall and sure. His voice, deep and calm, pulling Chloe and Isabel apart. He spoke soothing words Chloe did not understand, held her easily with one great hand wrapped around her arm. She heard him say “Belle,” a name she hadn’t heard in years, dripping now with sweetness and worry, and she wanted to puke.
Chloe drank hard from the Alvalaithen. Its golden song swelled to life, the chorus filling her. Her father’s hand fell away, unable to touch her.
“Did she tell you?” Chloe demanded, peering up at him. “Did she tell you what she did?”
“He knows,” Isabel said. “He’s always known.”
Her father’s face wrinkled with an impossible sadness. “Chloe . . .”
The world shrank. Chloe took a step back. Her foot sank momentarily into the floor and she stumbled. “You knew?” she whispered. “All this time you knew, and . . . you still wanted her back?”
Her father put his great arm around Isabel’s tiny form and pulled her close. Isabel shut her eyes and leaned her bushy red hair against his shoulder. “She never meant to hurt you,” her father said. “She deserves another chance. We all deserve another chance. Don’t build new mistakes on top of old ones.”
“I saved you,” Chloe told him.
“You’ve saved me every day of your life,” he said.
“No, I used my power to save you in the nest. I went underground for you—I faced the fear that she created—and even then you couldn’t tell me the truth. All these years I thought I messed up. I thought I made Mom leave.”
Her father released Isabel and reached out for Chloe. Still thin, she let him try to hug her, so that he would feel her absence in his arms. She winced as his hands passed through her, winced again as pain slid across his face. “I didn’t know that,” he said. “I didn’t know you blamed yourself. I thought you blamed me.”
Chloe shook her head in disbelief. “I never blamed you for anything. Ever.”
“Then don’t blame me now. Blame can’t help us be a family again.”
Chloe stared at him, hardly recognizing him. “Oh, it can’t?” she said. Tears fell from her eyes, fell tingling through her ghostly body to the floor. “Then in that case—blame.” She thrust her finger at her father. “Blame,” she said again, jabbing at Isabel. “Shame on you both. You deserve each other.” And then she let herself fall, letting the floor swallow her up, not even bothering to care where she landed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The New Recruit
HORACE RETURNED TO THE WARREN EARLY THURSDAY EVENING, exhausted from the night before, still disoriented from the falkrete. He was here to meet with the other Wardens and the mysterious new arrival, April, but he barely felt equipped. His head buzzed with the memories of the nightmare encounter with the Riven—the horrid surprise of the Auditor and the cat-and-mouse game with Dr. Jericho. He still wrestled with the awful feeling that he had saved the Mordin’s life, and what that could mean for the future. Above all, he hadn’t been able to shake those ominous words: “Sil’falo Teneves’s greatest mistake.” Not to mention thrall-blight, whatever that was. He’d slept with the Fel’Daera beneath his pillow, something he hadn’t done since he was in the Find.
And then there was Chloe. Against all odds, her mother had returned—a Tuner like his own mom, but far more menacing. Logically speaking, Horace felt it was too soon to say what Isabel’s arrival meant, but last night Chloe had made her own feelings clear: the return of her mother was nothing but bad.
Chloe met him in the front hall of the Mazzoleni Academy, wearing her green hoodie, looking frazzled. She was chewing ferociously on a mint, but her eyes were raw, as if she’d been crying. “I had my little reunion this morning,” she announced at once. “Ask me how it was.”
“Um . . . how was it?” Horace said.
“Heartwarming.”
“Really?”
“Yes, if by ‘warming’ you mean ‘stabbing.’”
