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Letters From the Sky

Page 15

by Tamer Lorika


  “Bad omen,” someone whispered, right in her ear.

  She began to panic now and lashed out at the warmth around her. It was pulsing, suffocating, wet. The warmth lashed back—there was pain in her head and on her knuckles and across her fingers. Her movements grew increasingly frantic, and she was only able to stay on her feet for a few moments—it was obvious what was happening. The children on the inside of the knot were the ones moving, gazes impenetrable; those on the outside were merely shields from sight, keeping up their whispered conversations and trying not to look as if they were interested in the proceedings; but they were, viciously.

  Something hard connected with Jeanne’s cheek. It split and she yelled out again. There were voices at her ear, mouthing—bad omen, unlucky, Tabitha, ill-fated—

  “Jericho!” Jeanne yelled, curling into a ball and covering her head. “Jericho, please, please, help me!”

  The sounds of running feet and the impact against her sides and back stopped, but the pressure against her skull didn’t. The shout of someone with a faint accent, then a woman, and then Jeanne could vaguely register the sight of the ceiling lights even through closed eyelids.

  “What is the meaning of this—”

  “Jeanne?”

  It was Ms. Milovskaya kneeling beside her, putting a hand to her shoulder. The other voice was Armand, shouting fire and Latin at the students, trying to gain some semblance of order. Order was needed, Jeanne thought distantly; sound began to leech back into the world—where had it gone before, where? She realized it was not as silent and whispered as she thought. They were yelling, bad omen, but it wasn’t a group, only a few—Michael and Louis and Monique and some boys Jeanne couldn’t name at the moment, her head hurt too abominably.

  The rest were silent and staring. They didn’t accuse; it only felt that way. They were confused. A few looked pityingly at her. Paris did. Jedrick looked as if he wanted to run over, but Armand saw and cuffed him on the side of the head before he could make a move.

  “Come on, let’s get you to Mari—to the infirmary,” Ms. Milovskaya murmured, helping Jeanne to her feet.

  Jeanette stumbled a little, swaying back and forth for a moment as her vision swam. “I’m okay…”

  “Dear girl, you are bleeding from the cheek and it looks like there is something wrong with your finger,” Armand stated. His eyes flashed and he turned to the other students. “You…five. I saw you myself. We are going to Madame Bonnefoy to have a nice, long talk about what in the world has gotten into you.”

  Jeanne didn’t hear the rest of the speech, too focused on putting her feet one in front of the other. It didn’t hurt a lot, but she felt awfully dazed, and her head felt off-balance and rattled.

  Ms. Milovskaya was silent and tense until they got to the infirmary, which was only an old storage closet, half the size of the classrooms, which stood off the main administration office. The walls were bare and white-washed but for a yellowing eye-chart on the wall. Under the chart was a single cot, refuse from a war before Jeanne was born, and on that cot was sprawled Ms. Roma, shoes off and forearm thrown across her face. The room smelled like antiseptic and cloth bandages.

  “Marianne, wake up,” Ms. Milovskaya said, sitting Jeanne on the edge of the cot while trying to nudge the nurse off with her free hand.

  “Am I dreaming?” Ms. Roma happily, groggily, sitting up as she rubbed her eyes. “To what do I owe this—oh, heavens above, look at you, you poor thing!”

  As she took in Jeanne’s appearance for the first time, she scrambled to her knees, immediately examining the cut on Jeanne’s cheek—the left one, opposite her mark—and her swelling fingers. Jeanne winced; there would be a bruise on her wrist, she was sure, not to mention her ribs, and her head still felt so fuzzy…

  She vaguely registered Ms. Milovskaya telling Ms. Roma what had happened in the hallway, but there were so many things she left out.

  “…children, latching onto something they don’t understand and trying to force it out…”

  Ms. Milovskaya was attempting to explain, but Jeanne shook her head, realized that was a bad idea, and put her hand on Ms. Milovskaya’s arm. “They weren’t all hurting me, and it wasn’t malicious,” she said, before curling her knees to her chest suddenly and clutching her head. It ached badly.

  Ms. Roma clucked in disapproval, sliding off the bed before helping Jeanne lay down onto it. “Don’t even try to explain, little chit. And you, Cece—get back to the bits of your class that aren’t bullies. I’ll get the story from this one later.”

  Ms. Roma was surprisingly no-nonsense when she had to be. Ms. Milovskaya’s gaze darted nervously to the door of the infirmary but, finding it clear, she pecked Ms. Roma on the cheek and left. “Thank you, Marianne,” she called over her shoulder.

  “Not doing it for you,” the nurse called back cheerfully. Turning to Jeanne, she plopped onto a low chair and reached for some swabs of cotton cloth and a bottle of unlabeled liquid that was likely antiseptic. She dragged the chair over to the side of the bed, and Jeanne winced at the noise.

  “I know it hurts, chit, but we need to get you cleaned up,” she said, still cheerful, pulling Jeanne’s hand off her temple. Ms. Roma wiped the antiseptic and cotton over Jeanne’s wound. It didn’t even sting.

  “Can—can you turn off the radio?” Jeanne asked as the sound pounded in her head. There was a little green plastic hand-crank radio playing in the corner of the infirmary, near the window. An impassive male voice was intoning a strain of breaking news, over and over.

  “…the city has been taken. We have lost the capital. The city has been taken. We have lost—”

  “Paris,” Jeanne said quietly. “She didn’t step in. Neither did Jedrick.”

  Ms. Roma shut off the radio, frowning at the news, but she turned back to focus on Jeanne. “I’m sorry, little girl. Now, shhh, and let me check out your hand. Close your eyes if you can. I think it’s okay if you take a little rest, but I’m going to keep watch just in case, all right?”

  Jeanne let her eyes slip shut almost immediately, squeezing them closed for a moment against a wave of ache. Slowly she relaxed, and by the time Ms. Roma got around to splinting her finger, she was already asleep.

  * * * *

  And she dreamed. She dreamed she was being dragged beneath dark water and she floated in it, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, barely a body at all. A light glimmered beneath her feet—she did not go toward it; rather, it swam towards her, growing unsteadily brighter and larger as it neared.

  It wasn’t a light, really—it was a picture, a vision, a room she had never seen before, but the sense of familiarity was stifling, as if there were something there to which she was drawn. But she could not see details, just waited, suspended, as the light-picture grew larger and larger and closer and closer until it was wider than she was, almost at her face. Then it passed through her, or rather she through it, and she was inside as one would float inside a soap bubble.

  Jericho was there.

  She was in the middle of a room with no discernible shape or size or terminus, surrounded by dark cowled figures who floated or stood or hovered; it could not be told, there was no floor. She looked absolutely terrified.

  “We are here to try a Guardian of the Ninth Provost for Crimes Against the Ward and Against the Community,” the Auditor intoned. He was in the room, too, his pen in one hand and parchment in the other, reading from it. “You have heard the evidence previously, and the Guardian in question has declined an explanation for its actions. We are gathered to hear the verdict.”

  There was silence, dead and thick and choking. Jericho’s muscles spasmed, the ones in her sides and in her upper arms. Jeanne could see them.

  She had a body, now, Jeanne realized, as she floated down, lethargic, detached. She reached out and gripped Jericho’s hand. Jericho squeezed back, but did not look away from her distanced gaze at a wall opposite. But she did squeeze back, and her muscles slowly relaxed. The twitching stopped, at least.<
br />
  There was a deep bass tolling, such as the ringing of some huge and desperate funeral bell. Just one, but it rushed through Jeanne’s whole, insubstantial body. It was a current, the sound, pushing her backwards, and she floated with it like a scrap of fur or bone in a river, anchored only by Jericho’s firm hold on her hand. She gripped the Guardian tightly as the tolling died.

  Through the mere moments it lasted, the Auditor had turned his imperial head towards the cowled Sentinel on the far right. When the sound had faded, he turned back to Jericho.

  “Ni asks, ‘What possessed you to act this way, knowing the rules against Marking a Ward?’”

  The Auditor’s voice changed; for the first time since Jeanne had seen this frightening creature, his voice changed into a deep booming, resonating the same bass toll. His expression did not change, only his voice, as he acted as a voice for the other.

  “I offer no explanation. I only acted as I thought necessary,” Jericho replied.

  The bass sounded again, only to be cut off by a slightly higher tang, then the light lilt of another. The sounds were not deep or shaking but they hurt, they were sharp, tugging Jeanne away like a banner in the wind, and Jericho tightened her grip.

  Here his voice grew demanding and nasal. “Pa and Zhou both remark, ‘It is not up to you to decide what is necessary—the girl is not yours’.” The voice switched again, to something almost feminine. “‘And now you have corrupted the child’s life for good, as well as the lives around her!’”

  Jeanne squeezed Jericho’s hand as if to deny those claims, and Jericho squeezed back.

  “I have corrupted nothing,” Jericho replied. “You care so little for the Wards; that is why you do not watch over them yourselves. You have entrusted me with a single life to protect, and I will do it how I believe is best.”

  Now four bells at once—one, the familiar bass and the other, the highest tinkling, then two new ones, in the middle, each barely a step above the other. Jeanne had to clutch onto Jericho’s arm and Jericho turned to her, sweeping her into her arms and against her chest, using her own body as a buoy or shield so Jeanne would not be washed away. Jeanne clutched to Jericho, as if her own insubstantial body could keep any of the rage back. Jericho was full of it. It seeped out.

  “Ni tells you to ‘know your place!’” the Auditor shouted above the noise. Then two voices rang out inside his own, overlapping and swirling within each other like a double-toned instrument, an unfinished chord. “Zhou and Ga say, ‘You will be removed from her side at once, but—’”

  One of the middle bells sounded again, insistently. “‘But…perhaps this effort is unnecessary,’” the Auditor said with a faint hint of amusement. “‘You worry so about the girl’s life when its fated end is soon, in any case.’”

  Jeanne saw Jericho tense and she moved, holding tightly to her shoulders, trying to keep her back or down. “Don’t, Jericho, don’t.”

  The clearest, purest of the bells toned, just once, and everyone, from the Auditor to the bass bell, froze.

  “It seems,” the Auditor said after a long moment, after he had willed shaking limbs to calm, “‘we are not alone in this chamber.’”

  And oh, his voice was the same tone as the bells of Jeanne’s own little church.

  There was silence again, thick and fluid. Jeanne found herself floating, staring down at the proceedings as she had before. She was tethered only by her hold on Jericho’s hand, though suddenly unwrapped from her arms.

  “Jericho, what’s happening?”

  “Leave! Begone!” the Auditor screamed. “Go free, human, go free!”

  “Jeanne, it’s okay,” Jericho said. Her gaze had never moved towards the girl, not once. “Jeanne, I’ll be there tonight. I promise.”

  Jeanne didn’t let go of her hand, but she was ripped from it, away from the glowing circle of the room and through the dark, grasping water as the light grew smaller and smaller and she grew farther and farther away.

  Then she woke up.

  * * * *

  “…the city has been taken. We have lost the capital. The city has been taken…”

  Jeanne woke to the sound of the hand-crank radio mumbling its news again. Ms. Roma leaned against the desk, chin in her palm, staring out the window with a worried expression. She turned to look at Jeanne and smiled. “So you’re up. Good. Head feel better?”

  Jeanne slowly moved her hand to feel her temples, as if that somehow would give her the answer she needed, but she paused when she saw two of her fingers splinted together.

  “What…?”

  “Your ring finger was sprained, girl, that’s all. Keep the bandages on for a little bit longer and it will be right as rain. Your head?”

  “Fine,” Jeanne mumbled, still fuzzy. That bass bell still echoed in her skull, bouncing off the curved walls as if nothing had gotten in its way. Oh Jericho, she had to be all right.

  “Hmm,” Ms. Roma snorted. “Okay, if you say so. Well, school just ended, if you’d like to know. The bell just rang. I’d say, doctor’s orders, don’t go to that Cotillion class of yours. Just head home. You can return to normal activity next week, got that?”

  Jeanne nodded. She had wanted to dance, but Jedrick and Paris would be there and, though she loved them, their halting waltz would be impossible to watch right now.

  She stood up, staring at her fingers blankly, wondering why they didn’t hurt and what had happened to the kids who had done this.

  “Do you want me to walk you home?” Ms. Roma asked, following Jeanne as she picked her way to the door.

  “That’s all right, I can find my own way. Thank you.” Jeanne flashed Ms. Roma a smile before taking off. She didn’t wait to see the expression the other woman had on her face. Something told her she didn’t want to see it.

  * * * *

  When she got home, she told Maman she had fallen very hard. Maman believed her. Gramaman didn’t, giving her a cup of soup she had been boiling for dinner and telling her if something like that happened again, she would tell Papa. Jeanne shook her head and repeated that she fell.

  Papa barely noticed at all. He looked transparent and told them he would be going to bed early before leaving them at the dinner table, not touching his soup and bread and cheese. Gramaman gave the bread and cheese to Jeanne, the soup to Maman, and that was the end of it.

  That night Jeanne lay in bed, trying to fall asleep. She was too tense, expectant, waiting for Jericho to come for her as she had promised. But that would not help, not at all, if she could not even close her eyes. Her shoulders shook—it was getting colder in the attic—and she burrowed deeper in Gramaman’s quilt with only her face sticking out of the covers.

  She closed her eyes, trying to distract herself, to think about other things as best she could.

  The creak of an open door, and Jeanne went absolutely still.

  “Jer…” She opened her eye, but did not move. Maman was framed, back-lit in the doorway.

  She thought Jeanne was asleep, that much was obvious, and was holding a small vase or a milk bottle of some sort in her palms. It was full of water, and Maman dipped her fingers in, whispering something, before flicking it at Jeanne’s prone, unbreathing form. Drops landed on her face and she flinched away, only imagining they burned.

  “Evil, be gone,” Maman whispered, closing the door as she left.

  Jeanne fell asleep with the water sliding down her cheeks.

  * * * *

  Then Jericho was next to her, kneeling beside the bed and gripping Jeanne’s fingers urgently. Jeanne sat up in an instant, legs swinging over the side of the bed and arms going around Jericho’s shoulders.

  “Are you all right?” Jeanne asked, fingers moving over smooth skin as if trying to find scars or wounds.

  “Yes. Of course,” Jericho said, distracted, hands and black gaze moving over Jeanne’s fingers and injured cheek and the bruises on her wrist. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. Everything. Tell me what the bells told you.”r />
  “The bells…the Sentinels,” Jericho repeated, understanding.

  “Yes, the Sentinels. They were…did they frighten you?”

  “When they told me they would take you away,” Jericho admitted honestly, putting her head in Jeanne’s lap. Her body was still tense and her words came fast, tripping over each other.

  “Did something happen?” Jeanne asked. “Something, after I…after they forced me to leave? You are worried, and your voice isn’t steady.” That much could be clearly felt.

  Jericho just shook her head, cheek pressing against Jeanne’s thigh. “No. They didn’t punish me at all.” She only answered the question Jeanne asked, not the one in her voice.

  Jeanne knew Jericho was ignoring it, so she tried again. “That isn’t everything. Why did they allow us to stay together?”

  Jericho didn’t meet her eyes. “Something is coming. They believe you and I will be torn apart by it, but I won’t let that happen. I won’t.”

  She was speaking to herself. Jeanne felt power surging just beneath the surface of those words.

  “Then don’t,” Jeanne said, bringing Jericho’s chin up so they were eye to impossible eye.

  It was Jericho who closed the space between them, for the briefest instant. “I have a plan—or something of one. It’s—I have a way, I can send you a sign, a signal, but you need to trust me and do exactly what it says, do you understand?”

  She was so serious it hurt, and Jeanne nodded. “Of course. Anything.”

  Jericho put her head back in Jeanne’s lap.

  “Jericho…”

  “Yes?”

  “Where are you going to go?”

  “What do you mean?”

 

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