When Harmyn lowered her arms, Nikolas faced her. Her cheeks were pale, her eyes too bright. She pressed her palm against his forehead, then pulled it away. “Better?” she asked.
“Better. Thank you,” he said.
Harmyn winced as she stood.
“What’s wrong, child?” Old Woman asked.
“That was hard. I want to take a nap,” she said as she curled up on the bed.
Nikolas went to cover her, folding the blanket’s edge at her chin. “She’s already asleep,” he said as he turned to us. “That was—that was—”
“Beyond words,” I said.
DIARY ENTRY 27 FEBRUARY /38
Harmyn has been going to town in the middle of the night. This shouldn’t concern me as much as it does, because she used to do this all the time. She said she needed to “practice” and to learn if the “poison” still hurt her as it once did. People still can’t see her (yet?) but some can hear her. If she says hello or sings a little, they look around trying to find the voice. Glimpsing people’s thoughts and memories is as simple as turning her attention to them, but if she touches them, her awareness is much stronger. She promises she didn’t do that much. As for the poison, because we’ve taught her to breathe and keep her feet or hands on the ground, Harmyn discovered she can let it pass through like water, similar to what happened in her dream.
However, she’s noticed something she didn’t before.
Everyone is filled with “shadows,” inside their bodies. Sometimes they seem to disappear, but they can come out again in an instant. The shadows are grayish and thin, or black and dense. Children have them, too, but theirs aren’t as dark or thick. In the past weeks, she’s noticed the shadows changing, getting darker, heavier, more of them.
These shadows make the poison, and the poison makes the shadows, she said. As poison, it moves and gets into other people. If the poison stays, it makes shadows, or makes the ones already there worse.
She said she understands now what happened after she drank the first vial. She had shadows that made her act hateful, and that poison entered me and that made my shadows angrier.
Old Woman wondered if the shadows are related to memory. Harmyn confirmed they are. Harmyn wouldn’t tell what she’d seen in Nikolas, but when she sat with him, one of his shadows lightened ever so slightly. I asked why.
“Because he was willing to see it,” she said.
DIARY ENTRY 5 MARCH /38
Through his notes, I can tell Nikolas has his sense of humor again. He still grieves, but he says it’s not as acute. Rothwyke continues to crumble; the wall rises still slowly. He’s admonished me for avoiding my father (Father has seen him again) and Fewmany, and he’s right to do so, but I’ve needed time to think. How careful must I be with Father, not knowing what he might divulge to Fewmany, and how careful must I be with Fewmany, knowing how magnificently I must deceive him.
I’ve asked him to search for a certain map Aoife mentioned, even though it might no longer exist.
ON THE FOURTEENTH OF MARCH, a horse carried me from the woods to town. Although a note would have prepared Father for my return, I decided to appear without warning. At the threshold of my childhood home, I knocked instead of using the key hidden near the steps.
“Hello, Father,” I said when the door opened.
He crushed me into his chest. I submitted until I needed a full breath and pulled away. He touched my head. “You’re silver again.”
I walked into the parlor, which looked the same as always. On the table next to his favorite chair was a lit lamp and a cup. I draped my cloak over the settee.
I accepted his offer of tea. When he returned, I was sitting in the chair across from his.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
“On a long journey, on Fewmany’s behalf,” I said.
“That I know. I’ve been worried sick. I even appealed to the prince to find you. Not a single letter in all this time to tell me you were well.”
“Rarely was I near a post service.”
“That you were alone, far from civilized places—”
“I was quite fine on my own, I assure you.”
He closed his eyes. They were damp when he opened them. “I’m so relieved you’re home. I’ve missed you.”
My mouth remained shut.
“Tell me about your journey,” he said.
His Tell-a-Bell whirred into its tinktinktinktinktink. He batted at the side of his head, fumbling for the mechanism, and pulled the device off his ear.
“What you want to know is whether I found what I was sent to find,” I said. “Per my agreement with Fewmany, I’ll tell him, and only him, what I discovered. Whether he tells you is up to his discretion.”
Father’s expression shifted from shock to anger to assent. In this instance, I was almost a colleague and not quite his daughter. He smiled slightly. “You remind me of your mother now. She wouldn’t speak of confidential matters that involved him.”
Whatever I thought I might say then, about the night of the scissors and the symbol, how he used me to win Fewmany’s favor, vanished. There was something else to say first.
“Let me tell you about your wife,” I said. “Do you remember the manuscript you gave to Fewmany, the one you found on her table? Well, I’ve read it.”
Father, so rarely at a loss for words, sat without a sound.
I explained how it had arrived by courier, that she forbid me to tell him about it, and that I suspected the language I spoke when I awoke from the fever was the same one in which the manuscript was written. Then I told him before she died, she made a cipher for it.
“I don’t understand.” He twisted the ring on his hand.
“She meant for me to find the manuscript and translate it.”
“Why? You be direct with me, Secret,” his voice firm, his tone fearful.
Now wasn’t the time to explain the manuscript’s relevance to Fewmany’s pursuit of the hoard or the truth about how The Mapmaker’s War began. Nor was this the moment to describe my journey to the realm and all that was unfolding. “Why? I’m not sure, entirely, but what I learned helped me to understand her,” I said. “The manuscript tells of a people lost to history and the special children born among them they called Voices.” I described their gifts and how they were treasured if they were born to those who understood them, reviled if born elsewhere. “Once, there were others like her, same eyes, same gifts.”
“Others like her,” he said with a smile. Then his face darkened. “As you know, your mother didn’t speak of her past. She protected you from a great deal of ugliness. When we courted, she told me about the things she suffered. She always feared I’d have a change of heart about her, but I didn’t. Each time she spoke of the past, it felt like a gift of trust as much as a warning. You wouldn’t believe what was done to her. Evil things called good. Her body, her mind, violated.”
He wiped his fingers across his eyes. “Once she divulged a horror, she never spoke of it again. Aside from her ability with languages, her other oddities seemed to vanish, but I knew she hid them instead. Zavet had uncanny moments that seemed a glimmer of her secret self, sometimes prescient dreams.” He paused, his gaze on me reluctant, then looked away. “She’d remark about events of which she could have no possible knowledge. Sometimes, she seemed to have eyes in the back of her head.”
“In a way, she did. She was blind,” I said.
“Ridiculous.”
“She was blind in the way we experience sight. She herself might not have realized it. That’s why she moved slowly, why she was clumsy.”
I stared at him as his eyes focused inward on his own thoughts.
“She learned she wasn’t alone. Not the only one. That must have given her comfort. She died”—his voice cracked—“she died with the knowledge. That was why she was so peaceful those weeks before.”
Dread gushed under my skin. The truth pushed against my throat, but I held it back. I couldn’t tell him she killed herself. Not ye
t, not then. I couldn’t bear to watch the grief ravage him as it had six and a half years before.
So all I did was nod. Yes, Father. What a good girl I was.
“Where are your things? I’ll take them up to the room and find clean linens,” he said.
“I’m not staying,” I said. His expression fell with disappointment. “A friend is allowing me to stay with her.”
“Miss Sheepshank and Miss Thursdale? The Misses Acutt?”
“Another friend. You don’t know her.”
“Why won’t you come home?”
“This hasn’t been my home in years.”
He winced. “Is there something you wish to say to me?”
“Do not tell Fewmany I’ve returned. This is a test. Don’t make me regret I’ve come to you first. I’ll see him soon.”
His mouth gaped as if he were about to reply, but he closed it.
“I’m going to the courtyard,” I said.
He followed me into the kitchen. He turned at the dining table, the same ochre bowl at its center, to put the cups away in the basin. I didn’t glance at her worktables as I stepped toward the back door and pulled the great bobbin and latch.
In the courtyard, I stood where my old friend Fig Tree had been. I thought of the hours I’d spent in her company, feeling content as I sat under her limbs. There was no flame, no fire, but the ground under my soles felt as if it had recently burned. I crouched to press my hands against the meager warmth, a gesture that echoed through the whole of my life.
DIARY ENTRY 20 MARCH /38
First day of spring. This morning as I went to fetch water, I sensed something was wrong. I called to the plants and trees but received no reply. I know they heard me because when I asked them to move, they bowed and bent. But they cannot speak.
DIARY ENTRY 23 MARCH /38
Today, the plants can’t hear. They don’t respond to anything I say. They give me messages, however. Images of stillness. The sky soft with dawn’s glow, the moon’s cool light, animals enthralled by a breeze. It is reassuring they aren’t distressed, although I don’t know what afflicts them. Of course I suspect the vials.
DIARY ENTRY 27 MARCH /38
Yesterday, I realized they can’t move. We can communicate again, though, and they conveyed the wind causes pain, pushing against their stiff limbs and stalks. Buds I expected to see open by now show no signs of unfurling.
When I finally told Old Woman what I’d noticed, she said she’d sensed an eerie lull in the woods but couldn’t determine why. Harmyn suggested we go into town to see what’s happening there, so we did, with me disguised. Everything is paralyzed there, too—trees along the sidewalks, potted flowers, ivy clinging to walls. I didn’t say how worried I was, but I didn’t have to. Harmyn felt it and held my hand on the way home.
Then this evening, I went to Reach with hope the ancient tree could tell me what’s happening. I saw the margins of his leaves were deformed, and I asked how he was. He heard me, and I received his reply. In the dark between my eyes, a seed ruptured into a sapling, which matured into a great tree, season to season, until its leaves withered and dropped and its bark shriveled.
He’s dying.
Then the image of the dead tree changed. A crack formed in its trunk, widening and deepening, until there was a hollow through and through. On the other side of the hole was a tiny sapling, its young leaves open and green.
I thought of the petrified tree where I’d been stung and Nikolas and I crossed into the realm. A thin place it straddles, and I believe Reach knows he will one day do the same. As for the new sapling, I don’t know what he meant.
I was already in tears by then, and was more overcome when he revealed his memories of me, of secrets I’d told him in words and tears. He also showed me other children, throughout ages, sitting at his roots, some happy, some sad, all of them seeking his comfort.
I asked how he sickened. Reach answered with visions of rain and underground flows and a great flood. I didn’t understand immediately, but then I realized: The water wasn’t the cause but the carrier. What I poured from the last vial contaminated the water, an element essential to life.
What have I done?
28 MARCH /38
AS WE READIED FOR BED, we heard a horse approach the cottage. Harmyn peeked through the door and let Nikolas inside. He greeted us, scratched Cyril behind his ears, and set a satchel of food on the table. While Old Woman and I put it away, Nikolas presented a box filled with paper and coloring sticks to Harmyn. She told him she’d never had a plaything like that, adding, with shame, she’d never learned to write or draw.
“I’ll teach you a technique you can master in minutes,” he said, pulling a seat next to her. Soon enough, Harmyn found a comfortable grip and practiced as Nikolas held a sheet of paper steady.
Old Woman welcomed Nikolas to stay but declared it was well past Harmyn’s, and her, bedtime. After one more drawing, Nikolas told them good night, and we left for a walk.
“How did you manage to get away this time?” I asked.
“I told my trusty guard Hugh I was leaving, got on my horse, and rode away.”
“What was the bribe?”
“No bribe. I realized I’m king now and I can change the rules if I wish,” he said, throwing his arms out in a magnanimous gesture.
“You’re joking.”
“Next, I’ll have someone tarred and feathered for my amusement.”
“Have you chosen your victim?”
“The magnate himself, but half the Council might overthrow me if I did.”
A protective feeling came over me for Fewmany, unwelcome but there nonetheless. “At his mention—did you find the map?” I asked.
“Maps. The original, and the copy. I was surprised either still existed. You won’t believe how beautiful they are, or the others of hers in the archive. Wait until you see them.”
“Others . . .” I said. “So, your map for the quest was different?”
“The one I used sent me south, then due east into Thrigin and Uldiland. This map is more, how do I put this—adventurous. Crossing rivers and mountains. It’s an irreplaceable artifact.”
“The only one who would appreciate that better than I is he, and that’s why it must be an ancient one.”
I pulled an envelope from my skirt’s pocket and gave it to Nikolas. “Please have that delivered to his manor. It states I’ll see him soon.”
As we walked, we filled in the details we couldn’t fit into our letters. Our steps led us to Reach. I didn’t want to tell Nikolas yet that the tree was dying. My heart felt bruised when Reach gave a deep sigh as Nikolas rested his hands on a huge limb.
“How long ago it seems, the first time you showed me the way here. He knows things about us no one else does, doesn’t he?” Nikolas asked.
“Old Woman once told me, ‘Sometimes, trees are the only things that stand still long enough to listen and remember.’ ”
Nikolas brushed his palms along the limb, walking toward me. “A silent witness.”
“Who never forgets.” I closed my eyes when I realized we were part of Reach’s final memories.
When I opened them again, Nikolas was looking straight at me. He dropped one hand from the tree, placed it on the curve of my waist, and kissed me.
This wasn’t like the one before the quest. This kiss was insistent and ardent. My lips parted and my fingers wrapped around his neck of their own volition. When his hands cradled my face, I drew away, breathless.
“Why?” I asked, my common sense flooding back.
“I wanted to. I think you did as well.”
The kiss had lingered far too long to deny it. “But we’re—We can’t—This isn’t—”
He took my hand—that was all—and the blood rushed swift in my veins, every shallow breath ablaze. I wanted the feeling to stop, and I didn’t.
“I’ve loved you since we were children. You’ve been my best friend, always. That hasn’t changed. But now. Secret, I’m in love with you
.”
I tugged my hand away. “This can’t be.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re my best friend and I’d prefer not to compromise it or, worse, lose it to some irreparable dalliance. Aside from that, even if I were from a family of land and title, I haven’t the right blood,” I said.
“The heart is blind to such distinctions. Right blood—that doesn’t matter to me, and I know it doesn’t to you. Every day, more now than ever, I’m crushingly aware of what’s expected of me, what people want from me. With you, there’s no pretense. I believe you love me for who I am rather than what. I’ve never doubted whether your esteem for me is genuine,” he said.
I blinked to fight back confused tears. “Of course it’s genuine. I feel the same. Regardless of my—idiosyncrasies—you have been the truest of companions.”
When he searched my eyes, I knew I’d met him only part of the distance.
“You stand there as if you’re being interrogated. Why is this so difficult?” he asked.
“I haven’t thought of you, of us, in any other way.”
“Never?” he asked.
“Not a single conscious thought,” I said.
“And now?”
“Now I must because, although I wish I could, I can’t deny I returned what I received.”
“Why would you wish that?”
“I don’t want to sacrifice what we share for the sake of curiosity.”
“I might be curious where my emotions could lead, but curiosity isn’t the impetus, I assure you,” he said. “My impression is I haven’t been rebuffed, yet for the purpose of clarity, you meant to kiss me back, and you wouldn’t be opposed if it happened again.”
I smiled, relieved by his humor. “Isn’t one supposed to be engaged to take such liberties?”
“Too late. That makes me a cad and you a woman of questionable morals. An answer, please.”
“Yes, and I would not.”
He pecked me on the cheek. “Good night, Secret,” he said, then walked off into the dark.
The Plague Diaries Page 23
