The Turnaway Girls

by Hayley Chewins

  But this is a worthless hope. A lying hope.

  Because no one will come for me. No one.

  Mr. Crowwith bids Mother Nine good evening, resting his eyes on me for a moment. He opens his mouth, as if he’s had a thought, but nothing slides off the surface of his tongue. He floats up the ladder toward the sky, the wind tearing at his sleeves.

  Mother Nine climbs up behind him. She wrestles the door out of the wind’s grip, and it slams closed over her head. The stone locks click like cracked knuckles. The rest of the othergirls sigh out breaths. They are ready for bed. I count their heads — twenty-five of them. Twenty-five girls who will never leave the cloister. Plus one. Me.

  I can hear Blightsend — bells ringing, flutes sounding. Music like spilled fire. I’ll never be a part of that. I’ll never leave the cloister. I have no use for my throbbing, gold-hooked ear, my stitched slippers — which are already rubbing the backs of my heels raw. I have no use for anything. All I am is a broken-boned girl who will lose all her nails, toes included, before she makes a single handful of gold. I’ll never be a girl-Master in a red dress, making music as I walk.

  Mother Nine tells the othergirls to go to bed. But to me she says, “Stay.”

  My silk-covered knees dig against the cobbles.

  When the othergirls are gone, she smooths her voice and sweetens her tongue. “Delphernia —”

  But she doesn’t get to finish. Because that’s when we hear it. Mother Nine hears it, and I hear it, and it’s definitely there: it’s a —

  Bang.

  Bang.

  A knock on the rattling skydoor.

  “Who’s there?” says Mother Nine. She’s at the top of the ladder again, tilting her ear toward the skydoor.

  There’s a muffled sound from behind sea-eaten wood, but it’s sucked away by the wind. She must not be able to hear, because she unclicks the time-stiffened locks. The wind grabs the skydoor from her hands. I gather my skirt out of cobble-mud, getting to my feet. I peer through the skydoor, but I can only see a deep-blue and deepening sky.

  “Who’s there?” says Mother Nine again.

  This time, a boy answers — I can hear his words if I listen carefully enough. Listening’s one of the things we learn in the cloister, and not just listening with your ears, either — listening with your whole body. Listening with your bones.

  “Bly,” the boy says. “Bly’s my name.”

  Mother Nine’s foot slips, and I think she’s about to fall back, meet Teeth Row with a crumple and snap. But she collects her limbs again, gripping the ladder.

  “They say to make gold of music is to kiss the clouds,” the boy continues. “Those are the First King’s words. But I’m sure you know that, Ninth Mother. Obligations are kept to the sea and to kings. My name is —”

  “I know,” says Mother Nine. She sounds defeated. “Your name is Bly.”

  I don’t understand why she’s listening to him. She doesn’t listen to anyone unless their words are written as law. Unless they’re giving us food in exchange for shimmer. But she’s staring through the opening of the skydoor as if there’s a ghost hovering beyond it. The Ninth King’s ghost.

  I wait. I consider kneeling again, but I want to be ready for whoever’s there — if Mother Nine lets him in, that is. I still can’t see his face. The wind outside the cloister whines and hisses, slapping at stone.

  Mother Nine climbs to the ground again. “Please enter,” she calls.

  The boy lowers himself toward Teeth Row, step by step on the creaking ladder. Lit shards of hushingstone set his face to glowing from below — brown skin and pursed lips. Black curls adorn his head. His eyes are dark.

  Just like mine.

  Just like the eye of the Master on the other side of the wall. The one who heard me singing. It can’t be him. But it is. It is.

  Don’t tell, Delphernia.

  The wind catches the door again and flings it shut over the boy’s head. He jumps, but he keeps climbing down. And then we are held, the three of us, in the cloister’s quiet: me, and Mother Nine, and a boy who could have me killed.

  He approaches me, ignoring Mother Nine. His clothes are simply cut and pale, unembroidered, and his shoes are crafted out of gold. He wears no bells, but unlike Mr. Crowwith, silence doesn’t follow him like a hungry mist. No — he has music in him, I can tell, and not only because of the stone-flute that’s sheathed at his hip like a weapon. His hands are always moving, moving, as though he’s trying to sculpt something out of air.

  He looks at the trees and then lifts his eyes toward the Sea-Singer’s carved portrait, which flickers in fickle light. A shadow passes over his face like a cloud covering the skydoor on a summer day — dark for a moment, then light.

  I swallow the heat in my throat, looking down like a good turnaway girl.

  “I’ve always wanted to visit this place,” he says. “I watch it from the beach and I think, Who lives there? It’s as though the stone is speaking to me. Calling me.”

  What is he talking about? I lace my fingers.

  “Look up, please,” says the boy. His voice cracks. “Eyes are two doors and they lead to the place where the soul was born.”

  My eyes meet his exactly. It’s like someone measured him out using me as the pattern. He looks about my age, too.

  “Your name?” he says.

  “I’m — I’m Delphernia Undersea,” I reply.

  The name of a turnaway girl is like two halves of the same broken stone. The first name is what the Mother hopes for the girl. And the second is what she dreads. Mother Nine has never explained to me what Delphernia means, but Undersea is from her dictionary of failures. Under the sea. Undersea. A prophecy of drowning. What’s more, a turnaway girl’s name only means something to the Mother who named her. It’s not meant to be used outside the dome of the cloister. But this boy seems to think my name is worth something, no matter where it’s spoken.

  “Yes,” he says. “You will. You will follow me into the sky.”

  Mother Nine stomps over, her shoulders wide as walls. “But you haven’t tested her,” she says.

  Bly looks past her. “That won’t be necessary,” he says. “She’ll do as gold does to the palm.”

  I’ll do — like I’m a pot or pan. The words make me scowl. But my eyes meet his again, and I take back my spite. Because he looks at me like I’m not a turnaway girl. He looks at me like I’m a person — a Master, even. Someone with a voice and words to speak with it.

  “She’ll be no use to you,” says Mother Nine. “Your drawers will be empty of gold.”

  “Her usefulness will be for me and the wings of birds to decide,” says Bly. A pained smile tweaks his mouth.

  He looks up at the painting of the Sea-Singer again, then narrows his eyes at Mother Nine. They hold a stare between them for a long, long time. Mother Nine’s jaw tightens, but she nods and takes a step back.

  Then she says, “Grant me one thing. May I talk to the girl alone?”

  “Words are never alone when they are spoken,” says Bly. “They carry their echoes with them.” But he walks back to the ladder and leans against it, watching us. Watching the cloisterwings, too.

  Mother Nine crowds me with her sleeves.

  “Delphernia, the safest place for you is here,” she whispers, “in the cloister.”

  The scabs on my fingers itch. My thumb’s bandage draws taut. I have to stop myself from laughing. If I don’t leave the cloister now, I will live here forever. I’ll be slapped until I’m nothing more than a scrap. That doesn’t seem very safe to me.

  Mother Nine glances up at the skydoor. “Delphernia,” she says. “Trust me.”

  She reaches for my hand — the one with the torn thumbnail — but I rip it away. My pierced ear hums with new blood. She’ll take no more skin from me.

  “A Master has chosen me, Mother Nine. Hasn’t my decision already been made? Should I not walk the path I’ve been given?”

  It’s a trick of nerve, my tongue. Because she m
ight tell me that this Master — whoever he is — is not one of the seventeen best. He’s not wearing bells, after all, and Mr. Crowwith doesn’t seem to know he’s here. But she is as speechless as an othergirl.

  I look up at the Sea-Singer. My prayer worked.

  The cloisterwings shift and shuffle. My heart splits. I’ll never see them again. Not if I leave. I want to run, kiss the bark of the hollow tree one last time, and brush the cloisterwings’ heads with the tip of a finger. I want to tell the birds I’m sorry they’ll never be free. I want to find the girl-Master’s stone-flute in the lungmoss and keep it for myself.

  But Bly is waiting.

  “I am sorry,” I whisper to the cloisterwings. The three words, so useless, are like kicks to my shin.

  I do not run to the hollow tree. I ignore the whisper-room’s door, like a scar in stone.

  I take my stiff new dress, my hurting hand. I take my bruises. I take my voice. I walk toward the ladder.

  Toward Bly.

  The boy with black eyes.

  The boy who knows my secret.

  I climb the first worn rung behind him, watching the heels of his golden shoes scraping at salt-weakened wood.

  I fill my lungs.

  It’s time I met the sky.

  I follow Bly up the ladder. Up and up. There’s a long fall below.

  The only thing keeping me going is the chance to be closer than I’ve ever been to the Sea-Singer. I can almost touch one of her eyes. I hold on to the ladder with my sore hand, to brush my fingers over her stone-etched hair.

  “I’ll keep you with me,” I say.

  Bly turns. “What was that?” he calls.

  I don’t answer.

  For all her classes, all the things she taught us — Histories, Silence, Making Shimmer — Mother Nine failed to teach us one thing: how to behave around a Master. If Bly is a Master. He’s not one of the best — that I know for certain. He doesn’t look like he hasn’t ever heard the word never. He asked my name, looked at me as though I was a girl and not a ladle with a crooked handle. And something else — he seems to understand how it feels to wear your life like a too-small coat — to know always and always and always that it’s only moments from tearing. But that’s only a gut-hunch. I don’t know anything about him. I don’t know him at all. And he doesn’t know me.

  Bly climbs through the skydoor and waits for me to catch up, reaching his hand through to pull me out, pull me up, pull me into —

  So much shine that I struggle to swallow, choke on the night’s blooming. The sea’s a searing silver. The open space whirls, stretches wider. My bones turn soft as sap. Bly lets me rest against him until I find my breath again. We stand on the curved dome of the cloister, star-shimmering lungmoss under our feet. The sea crackles with cold and salt.

  I can’t look up again — I can’t.

  Instead, my eyes follow the ragged rocks sticking out above the sea’s surface — a natural bridge that connects the cloister’s own island to the city of music — toward my new home. But even that is too much. For a few seconds, I am stiff as a tucked quilt — as though keeping still and straight will make the world smaller. But it only expands and expands. I breathe shallow breaths. I stop breathing altogether.

  “You cannot live without breathing,” says Bly, gripping my unhurt hand.

  I squeeze his fingers back. I breathe again — deeply, deeply — until my vision clears. “I know. I’m fine. It’s — it’s so beautiful.” The last word sounds like a sigh. I shift my weight and straighten my dress. I’m standing underneath the sky. I’m standing on the roof of the cloister. My toes twitch, chafing against the silk of my shoes.

  “Beautiful!” barks Bly. “I’d call it treacherous.”

  His words silence the sea. He’s a Master — he must be a Master. Which means he’s supposed to love Blightsend. He’s supposed to pledge his music to the place. One after the other, the knobs of my spine turn to frost.

  But I stop the thought that Bly might not be a Master. I close its mouth. Because there are other things to be afraid of now, and other things to embrace. Like the sound of stone-flutes and the promise of light in the distance. And the sky, which has stopped trying to choke me, which has taken up residence in my chest.

  Bly drops the word treacherous out of his hands, digs around for a new sentence. “Even one step can take you toward the sun,” he says. He’s still holding my hand. My feet are limp as dead fish. “It’ll be all right,” he adds. “We’ll take the first step together.”

  When I’m ready, he leads me down the stone steps that run in spirals around the cloister’s dome all the way to the ground. Closer and closer to the sea’s wild whistling. Closer and closer to the jagged-backed rocks that make a path toward the city. Blightsend. The name grows across my heart like a trail of lungmoss.

  When we get to the first rock, our arms twist together like branches. I move my foot onto a sharp-slanted boulder, and icy water laps against my ankle, as though the sea wants a taste of me. Another step and I slide, stumble. Bly catches me against him.

  “Fall not,” he says. “The sea can wait.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “Oh,” he says. “I’m sorry. It’s something I do when I’m nervous — quoting poems.”

  I think about all the odd-strung words he’s spoken this evening. Poems. The only poem I’ve ever read was the one written by the First Mother. We learned it in Histories.

  “To live behind stone is to make a life of watching,” I whisper.

  Bly stops walking. His eyes strike mine. “The First Mother’s poem,” he says.

  “Yes.”

  The sea is reaching its hands toward me. It wants to drag me in. The wind knocks my lungs about. My elbows snatch themselves against my ribs.

  “The world is rocking,” I say, pressing against Bly with my shoulder.

  “I’ve read all the poems on the island, but I’ve never heard that line,” he says, his brow creased.

  “Oh. That’s because it’s not a poem. It’s — a feeling.”

  He seems to understand.

  I don’t know how to talk to a boy who speaks only in the words others have written. I don’t know how to talk to a boy at all.

  “How old are you?” I say, taking another step, and another. “You sound like Mother Nine.”

  “I’m twelve,” says Bly.

  A wave rushes at me, foaming at my shins, giving my dress a white hem. I cover my mouth with my free hand. He could send me swimming for that disrespect. The sea backs away from me, glaring like a wide, wide eye.

  Bly only twists his arm tighter around mine. “I apologize,” he says. “I didn’t mean to make you itch. I suppose it’s because all my friends are dead men and women. Ones who wrote books a long time ago. I spend most of my time indoors.”

  “So you’re like me,” I say, feeling a pattering of warmth in my chest — a warmth that rushes against the chill of the sea. “Living behind walls?”

  His eyes crease as if they’ve been stitched at the sides. “Your walls are of one kind,” he says. “Mine are of another.”

  Bly and I cross the sea together.

  We cross worlds.

  He doesn’t let go of my arm once. I hold my chin against the sea’s wild breathing. Slowly, slowly, I’m getting used to being out in the open. To having the sky see me. To seeing it all at once.

  When we reach the city’s edge, we untangle our elbows. My shoes of music are wet and caked with grit. There are little cuts on my ankles from slipping on stone, but my belly is warm, as though someone’s made it a keeping place for freshly kneaded gold.

  “Blightsend,” I say, standing on the road that curves around the outskirts of the city.

  I turn to Bly because I want to see Blightsend through his eyes. Want to see him seeing it. But he looks at the sky as though it’s a dirty window. He peers at stone houses as though he’d rather they were rubble.

  Something has caused him anguish. Something as vast as the sea and as deep
as a sky full of falling stars. Because you’d have to be heart-torn to hate such a place. A city, grown of stone, on the most lonely island in the world, smooth-shining walls and slanting roofs and empty streets all strung with the chimes of bells. Shimmer dusting the windows. Tongue-fruit trees stretching their branches toward the moon. It makes me want to sing.

  Don’t tell.

  Don’t tell.

  I keep my voice tucked under my tongue, smothering it with spit. My throat stays silent, but it pushes me along, into the open-flung arms of the streets. One foot and then the next. My heart gallops into quicker rhythms, and before I’m able to think of it, I’m streaking down a narrow road.

  I’ve forgotten about the cloister, about Mother Nine. I am made only of lightness. I have no fears, no wants, nothing to dread. Not even the sky can get to me. Not even the foreverness of the sea. All my wounds quiet their aching — even my blood-dried thumb.

  I sprint, smelling the city — clean cups and spun flickermoth silk. Steamed tongue-fruit and boiled seaflowers. Bowls of hushingstone bloom with fire along the pavements, lighting the way for walkers. I spread my arms, ready for flying, tearing through the gloom and the glow until I get to the center of it — to the heart of the city that beats and beats and beats.

  I’m at the edge of a sunken oval, a giant shape dug into stone, a shin lower than the ground around it. It’s a feather, its quill a line of three narrow steps leading down. There’s a gold statue of a man, his palms raised, at the end of the quill. And there are hundreds of Masters dancing inside the feather, their clothes swarmed with golden bells. They make music just by moving. They part — two halves of a leaning forest — and a girl a little older than I am appears from within their midst. They dance around her, clapping out her name, while she stands still.

  “The Childer-Queen,” they chant softly. “The Childer-Queen, the Childer-Queen.”

  The Childer-Queen is wearing gold from head to toe — a crown like a garden about her head and a skirt like loosed stars. Her pale silks stand out against her golden-brown skin. Her mouth is cinched like a pincushion.

  Right away, I decide that she’s more First Mother than Sea-Singer. Not that it matters. I’m not going anywhere near her.