“Honestly, Harmyn.”
“Frankly, Secret, your desire to deny what you have proof of is impressive,” Harmyn said. She closed her book, stacked her papers, and wished me a good night.
I stayed behind to read more of the chronicles, but I couldn’t concentrate. My thoughts splintered, wondering why Aoife had written the manuscript, then of my mother. What had she thought when she read it? What of the logs and diaries she kept for her work? Years before, I’d searched them for hints about what she’d done with the manuscript after she received it, but I’d looked for nothing else. The sudden compulsion to skim them now left me uneasy and nauseated, as if something within me, yet again, forced its will.
Unable to sleep, I paced the residence’s first floor, from the wing Harmyn and I shared through the parlors to the main staircase and back. The pendulum clock struck one as I stood at a window between the drapes. Footsteps tapped against the marble floor. I almost hid behind the fabric until the person passed, but I peeked out and saw Nikolas.
He startled when he saw me move, peered to see who it was, and approached me. He took my hand, held it flat, and traced with his finger on my palm,
Waiting up?
No, I traced on his. Good time?
Yes drink laughs drink your night?
Read
I was grateful we couldn’t speak. I didn’t have to hide a tone in my voice, which might provoke more questions.
He dared to hold me close then. I hugged him tight for comfort. I felt he wanted the same but of a different sort. His grip slackened. He kissed me high on the cheek under my left eye. A shocking pain blurred my sight. I pushed him away as if he’d struck me.
I touched my face in surprise. A deep soreness lingered.
I took his hand.
Not angry at you. Face hurts, I traced.
Why?
?
WEEK 6
AT THE START OF THE sixth week, Margana delivered Harmyn’s new clothes. From the moment Harmyn put them on, her presence changed. She appeared taller and older, stately but welcoming. Her uniform made her seem like a visitor from a distant land. The violet coat was unlike what anyone in Rothwyke wore. Buttons dotted the placket of her white linen shirt, plain enough with a stand-up collar. The fall front trousers were made of black wool with a gray pinstripe, and the wide legs swished when she walked.
I joined her on the wall the first morning she wore her new garments. In that, she will stand out, I thought, and that was the point. As she began to sing, I felt proud of her, and a touch of envy. She didn’t hide from anyone now, not even with her clothes.
After she finished her songs, for an audience which filled the streets as far as I could see, we borrowed a horse from the stables and went to the woods with two satchels. With hers, Harmyn went to change into old clothes and then to fetch water. From mine, I laid out our breakfast—milk, bread, and the season’s last blueberries we’d picked on our way.
As I poured the berries into a bowl, I glanced at the scar on my left hand, a reminder of a deed I’d done, but I suffered no affliction for it. I dared to think of Fewmany then. That last night. His gloved hands. How he limped and flinched as if in pain. The wet wound under his chin. He showed signs before the rest of us, I realized. I wondered what he’d done to merit the injuries.
Harmyn set the pail near the hearth and plopped on her seat at the table. With an exhale, I forced him out of mind. I watched Harmyn eat, looking waifish out of her uniform.
You’re staring at me, she said as she chewed a piece of brown bread with her mouth open.
I’ll mind my manners if you mind yours, I said.
She smirked. What is it?
You’re not the child you were six months ago. When I watched you today, I thought how brave you are. How strong. You’ve had no proper person to teach you about your gifts, but here you are, using them beautifully, I said.
Thank you, and I have so proper people. Old Woman and you, Nikolas and GrandBren. Aoife, at least her words. And the . . . people . . . who come to me in my dreams. As for being brave, what choice do I have? I can’t do what I’m meant to if I’m afraid, she said.
Of what? I asked.
My own abilities, and how others might act toward me, and what’s ahead, she said.
I looked away from her. To some degree, I remained afraid of those things myself. We continued with our breakfast, and when we were almost done, Harmyn said,
We’re going to have visitors soon. Don’t be angry, please. I’ve shown some children the opening at the margin. They need to be here. I need to be with them away from town, and you need to be with them, too.
My body stiffened. My woods? I thought. A possessive response for what didn’t belong to me. That I’d so often found refuge there gave me no claim. That I had a peculiar affiliation with the creatures and plants gave me no right. As a child, in my loneliness and silence, it was where I could simply be, making it possible to endure countless hours when I wasn’t in Nature’s company. How could I deny that to anyone else?
Secret? she asked.
In all the years I’ve come to the woods, I’ve seen no one except Old Woman, and Old Man, and Nikolas So, my guess is no one wished to come. The stories everyone was told as children instilled a fear of the dangers they’d find. For an instant, I thought of Fewmany but didn’t mention him.
All the more reason to welcome them, she said.
It’s not entirely safe, though. The animals guided me. When you came, I could have called them to find you if you got lost, or before you were eaten I could, I suppose, ask them to help, I said.
Although we had weeding and harvesting to do, that would wait. Harmyn followed me to the woods’ edge. The twist of branches, which Nikolas and I found upon our return, had become an impenetrable wall of leaves and flowers. A drape of vines fell across the solitary opening, wide enough now for a horse to ride through.
I called the creatures and waited until groups arrived—sounder, herd, sleuth, pack, skulk, cast, murder, parliament. To the animals and birds, I explained I wanted the children to be free to wander the woods without threat, under their protection. They argued with memories, ancient and recent, of excessive hunts, heartless cruelties, and brutal violence. Although I knew I could command them to heed me—a power I wished not to exploit—I made them a promise.
The children’s first instinct will be wonder, and this I’ll nurture in them. Some might do harm, I know, but most will not, not if they’re taught to respect and cherish all beings here, I said.
For some time, I listened to their conference although they didn’t make a sound.
At last, an immense boar said, We agree, as long as we’re allowed our justice based on our instincts.
The whole of them nodded behind him.
So it is, and thank you, I said.
As the creatures disappeared into the trees, I nodded at Harmyn. Her eyes softened with relief.
Harmyn stood outside the entrance as the first group approached from across the green, pointing at the abandoned wall in the distance. They were girls and boys, seven in total, the youngest nearly five, the oldest about twelve. I stepped back to watch them enter. Their heads turned, eyes wide, mouths slightly open in amazement.
“I have a friend for you to meet,” Harmyn said as she gestured to me.
They stared at me with guarded expressions. A girl and a boy with the same brown hair and brown eyes clutched each other’s hands.
Tell them my name and that I’m not a witch, I said.
“This is Secret. She’s not a witch, but she has a special way with plants and animals. She’s sick like you, so she can’t speak. She’s going to lead us on an adventure today,” Harmyn said.
I beckoned to them.
Our progress was slow as they stopped to touch leaves, smell flowers, and look for what scuffled among the branches. Soon enough, they smiled and laughed, chased each other around trunks, and sat on the ground to observe whatever they could see.
Through Harmyn, I could tell them the names of things—not only bird but robin, not only tree but larch—and I took delight in the way they mouthed the words into memory. When we found something they shouldn’t touch or eat, I mimed horrible itches and ripping pains. I showed them how to hold insects gently, how to pick a ripe berry, how to explore with respect and gentleness.
When it was time for them to go, the youngest girl refused to budge. Her hands were full of treasures, a twig, a feather, a stone, a wilted flower.
“I promise, you can come back,” Harmyn said.
Crying, she plopped on the ground. I knelt across from her. When she peered up at me with tear-streaked cheeks, I looked back with damp lashes. Somehow, she knew I understood her sadness, mingled with joy, heavy with longing. I want to stay, her eyes told me. I nodded; I know, I know.
I wiped her face, helped her stand, and led her to the waiting group. Harmyn and I walked them to the entrance at the woods’ margin. One by one, they stepped out to the green, each looking over a shoulder for a farewell glance.
WEEK 7
ON THE THIRD OF AUGUST, Harmyn and I went to Father’s for a visit. The house smelled of fresh bread and fish stew. Elinor had not yet left for the day and was in the kitchen when we arrived. Aside from the way she held her right arm close to her body, she appeared to have no other visible afflictions. With a damp cloth in her hand, she motioned for Harmyn to turn around.
“You haven’t seen me since I got my new clothes,” Harmyn said. “What do you think?”
Elinor squared her shoulders and swept her hands across the front of her blouse as if to say, very fine indeed.
I helped Elinor store away what she’d cleaned. Neither reached for her notebook. By this seventh week, hardly anyone bothered with small talk.
When Harmyn heard the front door unlock, she rushed into the parlor. At the sound of footsteps, I turned to greet Father. He waved at us and left the room with Harmyn at his side. When he returned, he was down to his shirt and vest. Elinor handed me a wooden spoon and waved good-bye. Harmyn and Father settled side by side at the dining table for a silent conversation.
As I had several times before, I stood watching them. Again, I wondered if Harmyn had been an ordinary child, would Father have taken to her as he did. I heard her laugh as I stirred a pot. My teeth gritted as I looked at them rollicking with a shared joke. I couldn’t recollect a moment when I’d made such a bright noise among those same walls.
They acknowledged me when I served their plates. Father placed his notebook on the table, wrote a message with his atrophied hand, and pushed it past the ochre bowl.
All’s well, my pet?
I took the mechanical pencil from him, the body of it damp, and wrote, Warrick garden growing. Reports encouraging in other wards. Misses Acutt ask of you. Plenty to read in castle library. You?
Anxious to travel, nowhere to go. Still no word from Fewmany. Unlike him. 12th-floor men worried.
Remote where he is. FM Inc. in good hands, isn’t it? I wrote.
The notebook lay open between us. I set down the pencil, glanced at my index finger, and wiped away a reddish smear.
We ate in silence and helped Father tidy up when we were through. Once Father and Harmyn sat together in the parlor, her voice confident even as she struggled over difficult words, I ventured upstairs with two lamps. I’d taken no book with me that night. There was something else I planned to read.
As the evening light faded in my old room, I opened box after box in the storage area across the hall and carried those which held my mother’s old logs and diaries. Piles of Father’s boxes filled the room. He’d moved many of them from the third-floor storage to lock away food and supplies. I placed a lamp on a low stack and sat under the light. From the corner of my eye, I saw the faded blue chest with the painted animals. I had a sudden impulse to open it, remove the nesting dolls, and throw them out of the window, but I didn’t.
Fortunately, the logs and diaries had been stored in chronological groups. Her records reached back to the years after she obtained her degree from Altwort. For someone who kept so little of her past, she had preserved all of this. What I was searching for when I placed that first diary on my lap, I didn’t know.
I turned through the pages, her handwriting meticulous, sometimes finding a note or simple sketch in the margins. Most entries were written in Kirsauan, but she shifted among several languages throughout. After studying the initial pages, I discerned the text she’d been translating was an ancient one in a dead language. Astronomy, long before telescopes. I looked at the year. She had graduated from high academy that summer. In the page corners were notes to herself—paid rent; Prof U tea at 3; ordered paper.
In a different box, I found her last diaries. I could hardly breathe as I flipped through the final months of her life. Again, I studied the very last one, which I’d skimmed when I stored away her belongings after she died. This time, I looked more carefully, through the pages kept during the days I was sick with the fever, far fewer ones filled in the weeks which followed, until the end where she’d written: “A map is to space as an alphabet is to sound.”29 A sentence straight from Aoife’s manuscript and the hint for the cipher my mother had created. I thumbed through the blank pages and found tiny sketches. My heart knocked when I realized she’d practiced what she drew on the cipher—boat, leaf, jug, wheel, slipper, mushroom.
I reached into another box. That diary was from the year before she’d met my father, so I sought him in the following one. As I searched, I found detailed, whimsical drawings along some page edges, as if she’d paused in her work to daydream.
Then, in obvious contrast to the language in which she’d been writing, there was a name. Bren Riven. As I turned the pages, I could comprehend nothing else. However, in the margins, she’d drawn—and colored—intricate flowers, leafy vines, interlocking shapes, flying birds. The dates corresponded with what I knew were the months they exchanged letters, which soon enough became a courtship. Again and again, my father’s name appeared like rare blossoms among the text. In the next diary, one month in, she drew a jeweled ring surrounded by a heart. Their engagement. Not long later, two circles overlapped, again held within a heart. Their marriage. The dates revealed a gap in her work for several weeks. Her move to Foradair, the town where my father was born, in the kingdom of Ailliath.
Of the diaries I’d seen, no other had cheerful illustrations like these did. Without words, she spoke her feelings. She was happy.
My breath fluttered. Oh, she had loved my father. I remembered the way she turned her face to his, how she touched him with tenderness, how devoted she was to him. I knew such love now, and as quickly as I felt its expanse within me, I tensed every muscle to brace against a collapse, a black hole widening, widening to annihilate me from within.
WEEK 8
THAT EIGHTH WEEK, ON THE fourteenth of August, the weekly concert commenced as usual. Since the fourth one, the event had been moved to the green because the plaza’s gold-toned tiles were so buckled, they were dangerous to walk, much less dance, across. That night, Harmyn and I decided not to attend. I wished to be alone and didn’t want to have to guard myself against the pity, sadness, and anger I felt as I watched so many adults together, their debilities unavoidable. Harmyn simply needed her rest. She could barely stay awake past nine and slept like the dead until morning.
Nikolas, however, was obligated to make an appearance. By this time, there was a lottery drawn for the girls and women to dance with him. That he didn’t mind, even enjoyed. He liked the festivities, even if no one could talk.
When he returned that evening, he knocked on my door and asked if I was too tired for a walk. From the look in his eyes, he meant nothing more than that. Minutes later, I met him in the small courtyard and took his offered arm. He seemed deeply quiet, as if something was on his mind.
He led us to the tower where we’d stood the night before we left for the quest. That evening, what came to mind was my first visit to
this place, Charming’s wedding day when I first saw the whole of Rothwyke from above. Five years later, our town was crumbling, our people sick.
Like a little boy, he sat on the walkway between the battlements. I lowered next to him and took my notebook from my pocket.
What troubles you? I wrote.
Among many things miss parents. Much on my mind. He handed a letter to me. Read this while I write. Good news there.
Harmyn, gifted Voice; Secret, distant daughter of Wei; Nikolas, king of Ailliath,
A thousand years ago, our people were hidden, but never in hiding. That changed after what happened on the land now claimed by your kingdom. For this, we do not hold your king Wyl responsible alone. Other men counseled him to the decision and still more consented to do their bidding. Such is the culmination of individual wills leading to collective action.
As our histories witness, the violence couldn’t be contained. That we had never threatened, harmed, or robbed a neighboring people meant nothing. Within three years, we mourned the deaths of untold thousands killed in their homes and in battle, Guardians and neighbors alike. Once that first great war was done, there came others, and in time, a new form of pillage executed not by kings alone but by men of enterprise. Again and again, our people were discovered, the land that sustained us taken by force, those who survived bewildered by the choices of strangers.
Now our numbers are a fraction of what they once were. By necessity to save ourselves and be true to our ways, we have lived in hiding for generations. The Ancient Elders tell us a shift is at hand, and the time has come for us to emerge again to fulfill an ancient promise or perish at last.
We send this letter in peace and with the offer of aid.
As you have noticed, our people are already among you in Rothwyke. They serve with the intent to bring comfort to those in need. Within and beyond your borders, we will give our protection. We know of the strife among the kingdoms. Our warriors, who have long protected the Ancient Elders, will now be at your call to stand alongside your troops, if and when they are needed. There are those among us willing to give their lives for the era waiting to come.
The Plague Diaries Page 33
