Hush

by Dylan Farrow

  The Book of Days …

  … is not there?

  The podium is empty.

  I stare blankly at the podium. A couple of torn pages lay scattered on it. I lean forward, steadying myself on the podium, but wanting to scream.

  Someone else got here first. How could that be?

  I touch the papers, turning them over. I blink when I see my name written in a rushed hand …

  Shae,

  Forgive me. It was necessary.

  —R.

  The leaden disappointment in my chest shifts uncomfortably. I am too exhausted to even realize what it means for a moment.

  Ravod found the labyrinth first. He solved it. He stole the Book of Days.

  My finger moves back and forth over his words as I read them over and over.

  Forgive him? It was necessary? Is this a joke?

  The second ripped page has symbols on it that are almost too faded to see … until it moves.

  I pick it up, studying it a little closer in the bright shaft of moonlight.

  The lines are shifting over the page like water, forming symbols I don’t recognize. The longer I look at it, the stranger it seems. The images drift from side to side like they are swimming in a pond. Slowly they form a glyph that takes the shape of an ox. Letters appear beside it.

  Gondal.

  Is this fragment of paper from the Book of Days?

  Footsteps sound behind me.

  I shove the note and book fragment into my breast pocket and whirl around.

  “Hello, Shae.”

  Cathal.

  He steps into the light. Half a dozen armed guards and another four Bards crowd in around him.

  “Cathal.” I’m not sure how to begin to explain. Or if I should.

  “You have been an immense help. I will take it from here,” he says, marching up the steps toward me. A wolfish grin of anticipation overcomes his face. He strides to the podium, pushing me aside.

  He looks at the empty surface and back to me. Confusion etches across his face.

  “The Book is gone,” I say.

  He grabs me roughly by the collar. “Where is it?” he hisses. His face is rigid, with no trace of any of the amity he has shown me before.

  I can only stand in shock at his iron grip. This can’t be Cathal. He is my ally. My mentor. Cathal was the first person at High House, in the whole world, who believed me when no one else would. It seems utterly impossible that this man glaring down at me is the same person who encouraged me, had faith in me, helped me …

  Used me.

  My insides plummet and writhe sickeningly inside me.

  This is the real Cathal. The man who leaves Montane to suffer while he dines lavishly in his castle, throwing balls for dignitaries to mask the truth. Who sends his Bards to instill fear and desperation in his subjects while bleeding them of their resources. And when the Bards break free of his control, he imprisons and conducts tests on them in the sanitarium.

  This is the man who sends countless Bards to die in search of the Book of Days. Including me.

  We were never allies. I was another cog in his machine. Another tool for him to use and discard.

  I was a fool.

  My anger blazes inside me, red hot. Perhaps I made a mistake by trusting him, but his mistake is underestimating me.

  I’m still alive, and I can fight to make things right. I hold his gaze. Something deep inside makes me brave.

  “Somewhere that you can’t kill innocent people for it,” I lie. Then I spit in his face.

  Cathal recoils, jerking his arm to throw me roughly down the steps. I land on my hip, wincing. He takes a handkerchief from his coat and wipes his face, stepping down after me, his cool demeanor restored.

  “I have many means of encouragement at my disposal to persuade the truth from you,” he says. “I will use force if necessary.”

  Cathal’s guards descend on me, grabbing me tightly by my upper arms and hauling me to my feet.

  “I’ll tell you nothing,” I snarl.

  He regards me with distant eyes, all warmth and familiarity gone. I feel like knives have buried themselves all over my body, piercing deeper into me than any wound. Seeing him like this, a cold, calculating despot, is even more painful when it’s being leveled against me.

  I trusted him.

  “Wait, my lord.” A Bard runs quickly to the edge of the podium. Lodged in its corner is a ripped piece of cloth, torn from the hem of a Bard’s uniform, singed slightly at the edges and smeared with ash.

  I still against the guards, hoping they don’t know enough to connect it to Ravod.

  “Hmm.” The Bard gives the scrap to Cathal. He clenches it in his fist. “Search the grounds. Now.” A few Bards leave immediately as Cathal rounds on me. “I will give you time to reconsider,” he warns, “but not much. I am not one to tolerate such a betrayal of my trust, Shae.”

  “You’re the one who betrayed me!” I fight against the guards. “You said I was like a daughter to you!” I choke on the words as the weight of his actions knifes me again. “You made me believe…” I try to search for some sign of empathy in his face, some recognition of what he’s done. He stares back at me coldly. “Was everything you told me a lie?”

  He pretends to consider, his mouth arched in a vicious smile.

  “Cathal is my real name,” he says finally.

  I thrash my weight against the fists restraining me, screaming half from hurt and half from fury.

  “The more I tell you, the more you believe, the more it becomes true.” Cathal shrugs. “And deep down, that is what you wanted, is it not?”

  “You’re a monster.” My words grind out through my teeth.

  Cathal merely rolls his eyes. “Careful, Shae. You do not have much time to waste with struggling.”

  “What do you mean?”

  His response is a curt nod toward my hands.

  My heart stops when I look down. The tips of my fingers have turned a dark, sickly blue, and all-too-familiar veins have begun to thread beneath my skin.

  The Blot.

  28

  The aching heaviness of a fever registers first. Then the sensation of being pulled onto a hard, flat surface.

  I struggle to keep consciousness as I’m dropped somewhere.

  Am I back in the sanitarium? I try to lash out, but only manage to writhe languidly against the firm grip of the hands pinning me down.

  Firm, but surprisingly gentle.

  “Careful, there’s no need to hurt her,” one of the guards says.

  The voice is as familiar to me as my own. Even in the midst of my rising fever, I can place it. It feels like forever since I’ve heard it, but it’s unmistakable.

  I struggle to open my eyes. My head falls to the side, and I see a flash of silvery blond hair. Longer than I remember. Broad shoulders and muscular arms …

  Another trick. I can’t trust anything I see in this castle.

  The last thing I hear is the sound of an iron door clanging shut. It sends an ache through every muscle in my body. A coughing fit painfully pulls me under into a dark blue abyss.

  * * *

  “Well, this certainly isn’t how I thought things would turn out.” The voice is the first sound I’ve heard in ages.

  I turn toward it. The back of my head feels like it’s grinding against the stone underneath it.

  I wait until the throbbing in my skull stops before I open my eyes. I have a strange surge of relief when I find out that I’m only in a regular prison instead of the sanitarium. My cell is about half the size of the bedroom in the dormitory and constructed from dark stone. The only aperture is a barred iron door.

  Beyond, there is the silhouette of a woman. Her hands grip the door. One bears a burn mark.

  “Kennan?” Air passes over the dark veins in my throat when I speak. I don’t sound anything like myself. “What are you doing here?”

  I feel foolish even asking. I know why she’s here. She’s come to gloat. Or finish me off.r />
  “You were supposed to be there,” Kennan says, without preamble, “at the house. With your mother. You were the one we were supposed to kill.”

  “Come to finish what you started?” I wheeze. The effort of speaking is enough to cause another coughing fit.

  Kennan shakes her head. “That’s not what I intended.”

  “I’m tired of riddles.” I pant in shallow breaths.

  “Fine,” Kennan says, taking a piece of paper from her pocket and unfolding it. “Tell me what this means to you.”

  I glare at her, but she doesn’t move. With effort, I struggle to sit. Every bone in my body feels like it’s being set on fire as I push myself off the stone bed and shamble to the door of my cell.

  Kennan does not flinch as I take the paper between my blue thumb and forefinger. I tilt it toward the light issuing from the hall, the only illumination I’m afforded.

  It’s one of Niall’s maps, a detailed rendering of my house and the surrounding valley. Only, there is a landslide drawn where there once was pasture.

  “Niall caused the landslide?” I frown. “Why? To cover up that you killed my mother?”

  Kennan fixes me with a level stare, her pale eyes deliberating. Her mouth twists briefly before she answers.

  “I…” She pauses. “I think I killed your mother.”

  She’s lucky she is on the other side of an iron door and I have no energy to perform a Telling. It’s taking all my strength to remain upright.

  “What, you’re not sure?” I ask through clenched teeth. “Seems like the sort of thing someone ought to remember.”

  “My thought exactly,” Kennan says, her voice quiet. “I’ve been trying to find out the truth. I wanted to fix it. I thought the answers would be in the Book of Days. I…” She looks away. “It doesn’t matter. But you deserved to know.”

  “You’re a piece of work, Kennan,” I seethe at her. “You certainly seemed contrite when you performed all those Counter-Tellings and tortured me during training.”

  “You—” She stops abruptly, before whatever insult she had lined up can slip free. She takes a breath and starts again. “If you failed, you would have been safe. I did it to protect you, to keep you hidden.”

  The truth of her words clicks into place. “Hidden from Cathal,” I whisper.

  “Who else?” Kennan rolls her eyes. “He did the same thing to me, you know. Played on all my vulnerabilities, pretended he was my only friend. It was an act. He wants the Book of Days and doesn’t care who he destroys in the process. I barely escaped the labyrinth with my life.”

  My whole body is shaking. “Even if that’s true, why would I ever trust you after what you did to my ma?”

  “Will you shut up for five seconds? I’m trying to make this right,” Kennan snaps. Her tone is no different than usual, but the look in her eyes has changed from frustration to regret.

  I steady myself, tightening my hand around a bar. “Then make it right. Say what you came here to say.” I sigh. At this rate, the plague will claim me before I make any headway with Kennan.

  She takes a deep breath. “The tithe was only part of the reason we were sent to Aster that day,” Kennan says. “Cathal told me this task would absolve me of my failure to get the Book of Days. We were tracking a rogue Bard, one that has eluded us since long before I came to High House. Our sentries in the wasteland uncovered information that led us to believe she was hiding in Aster.”

  “She?”

  Kennan cocks her head. “Did you not know your mother was a Bard?”

  I freeze. The question hangs in the air like a storm cloud about to erupt. Ma? A Bard?

  “Niall and I were tasked with apprehending her. She was to be brought in alive. She resisted,” Kennan continues. “The last thing I remember is reaching for your mother, but a Telling hurled me at the wall. I don’t know whose it was. When I came back to myself, Niall was pulling me from the house, promising not to share with anyone what I’d done.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. A moment passes between us in silence. “All I know is that I’ve had nightmares every night since. I’ve seen terrible things.” Anguish creases her face, a pain I’ve come to know well since arriving at High House. The madness that seeps in and the fear that there is nothing you can do to control it. “You seem to know what I mean,” she adds.

  “The madness,” I say, nodding.

  Kennan pauses, her eyes locking meaningfully on mine. “Except I don’t think that’s true.”

  “Why would…” I trail into silence under Kennan’s gaze. It’s a terrifying thought, but she might be right.

  I think back to what Cathal said. The more I tell you, the more you believe, the more it becomes true. The madness, and the idea that women were somehow more susceptible to it, was just another lie to control us.

  “Do you really think it’s impossible, after everything you’ve seen?”

  I take a deep breath, ordering the shuffle of thoughts racing in my head. “So … you wanted to find the Book of Days, why, exactly?”

  “I thought I could make things go back to the way they were. Undo what happened,” Kennan admits. “Erase my mistakes.”

  “You said my ma spoke to you,” I say. “You told me, ‘she said it was real’?”

  Kennan shudders, but nods imperceptibly. “Gondal.”

  I gape, unable to speak.

  “She said she helped people find it. That they lived free of High House there.” She hesitates. “You didn’t know?”

  I shake my head in disbelief. The thought that Ma spoke, and to Kennan of all people, has to be some kind of cruel trick. But when I think back to my time with Ma, and her silence after Kieran’s death, I wonder if I ever really knew my mother at all.

  “Why say this now?”

  “I don’t have to like you to know it’s the right thing to do.”

  I fall back, unable to hold myself up any longer. The quiet is painful as it stretches.

  “And I’m tired of hiding. This guilt…” Kennan grimaces. “It’s made it hard to recognize myself. The longer I hold on to it, the more I lose. Maybe I didn’t kill your mother—”

  “You didn’t save her either.”

  Kennan’s eyes flick upward to mine. For the first time, I see the enormity of the pain she’s been carrying. She hid it well.

  “I won’t ask for forgiveness that’s not in your power to give,” she says. “But I would like to atone for my action—or inaction—if you will allow me.”

  I hold her gaze. Her pale eyes stare back, unblinking. Perhaps I will never understand Kennan’s morality, but I don’t doubt her sincerity.

  “And how do you plan to do that?”

  “I’m going to get you out of here,” Kennan replies. Before I can respond, she turns on her heel and disappears from view. As soon as she’s gone, two guards emerge and silently take up positions at either side of the door.

  I draw a ragged, heavy breath. I hate to admit it, even to myself, but all this time, I’ve been waiting for Ravod to show up, for him to inform me that he wasn’t the person who stole the Book, that it all wasn’t a setup. I wish I understood. Why and where did he take it?

  I look down at my shaking hands, dark with plague. Pushing up my sleeves, I see the veins have spread past my elbows. They burn beneath my skin, on my legs, my back, up the curve of my jaw. It might not matter whether I escape or not.

  My fate is firmly sealed.

  29

  It’s hard to know how much time passes in a tiny, windowless cell. Hours can pass in a delirium-fueled heartbeat, or take an eternity when gasping for air between bouts of coughing.

  In the brief moments when my mind is clear, I’m haunted by Kennan’s revelation. Ma was a Bard. She hid her past from me my whole life. My heart breaks not being able to ask her why.

  I can see the curvature of Ravod’s form behind my closed eyes. His words are etched into the deepest recesses of my mind.

  Wh
at if you don’t like the answers you discover? his voice echoes.

  I pull out the fragment of the Book of Days—mercifully, I was never searched—and turn it toward the light. The guards don’t like looking at me. Every time I cough, they flinch. They fear that I could infect them too.

  The ink shimmers, moving fluidly over the paper, creating symbols and icons I can’t interpret. I watch them shift for several minutes, wondering what kind of language this is.

  I pull Kieran’s ox from my breast pocket, comparing it to the ox that formed on the page. They are nearly identical.

  As though the paper senses the ox in my other hand, its lines dissolve in a pattern toward it. Mountains, rocks … a path.

  No. A map.

  It charts a course across Montane. My eyes watch, tracing houses, caves, passages. Images flicker beside each one, listing unfamiliar letters, save for a single symbol of a crescent moon beneath each landmark.

  Slowly lines compose a small house surrounded by sheep in a mountain valley. My home. Letters form beside it. The same symbol.

  Before I can wish for the image of my house to stay a little longer, it fades. Several dozen more places follow, all leading east. At last I see a house tucked into some trees in a distant, barren forest beyond the wasteland. A symbol. And a strange, yet comfortable feeling resonating deep within. Letters begin to form beside each glyph.

  Safe.

  The lines shift one last time, dissolving into one final word …

  Gondal.

  I gasp, which turns into a hacking cough that wracks my whole body, squeezing my lungs tight inside my chest.

  I sit up. My blue fingers are shaking violently as I clutch the fragment of paper.

  My mother was a rogue Bard. She ran a safe house for refugees fleeing to Gondal. Fleeing from High House. Fleeing the lies, the death, and the tyranny. She died for it.

  I snap out of the revelation when the door of my cell whines open. I quickly stash the paper in my pocket as a tall figure darkens the door. My heart furiously protests the boundaries set forth by my chest, hammering louder than I’ve ever heard it.

  In the dim light I can make out a guard’s uniform. My gaze travels upward, locking onto a pair of blue eyes I thought I had imagined.