And the Elders owned the Road. Which is to say that Grand Elder Gherland owned the Road, and the other Elders had their cut.
The Elders owned the Bog, too. And the orchards. And the houses. And the market squares. Even the garden plots.
This was why the families of the Protectorate made their shoes out of reeds.
This was why, in lean times, they fed their children the thick, rich broth of the Bog, hoping that the Bog would make them strong.
This was why the Elders and their families grew big and tall and strong and rosy-cheeked on beef and butter and beer.
He snapped his fingers, and armed guards poured into the room. They were a special unit, provided as always by the Sisters of the Star. They wore bows and arrows slung across their backs and short, sharp swords sheathed at their belts. Their long braided hair looped around their waists, where it was cinched tight—a testament to their years of contemplation and combat training at the top of the Tower. Their faces were implacable as stones, and the Elders, despite their power and stature, edged away from them. The Sisters were a frightening force. Not to be trifled with.
“The Sisters of the Star know what to do with broken minds, my dear. I’m sure it hardly hurts at all.”
The Guard was efficient, calm, and utterly ruthless.
Antain was a nice enough young man, nearly thirteen. He was a hard worker and a quick study. He was good with numbers and clever with his hands and could build a comfortable bench for a tired Elder as quick as breathing.
Antain had big ideas. Grand notions. And questions. Antain was —how could one put it? Overly keen. If this kept up, he’d have to be dealt with, blood or no.
The boy calmed visibly, his eager face tilted toward the ground.
Next, Antain was to air out the room, then post the day’s agendas, then fluff the cushions for the Elders’ bony bottoms, then spray the entrance room with some kind of perfume concocted in the laboratories of the Sisters of the Star—designed, apparently, to make people feel wobblykneed and tongue-tied and frightened and grateful, all at once—and then he was to stand in the room as the servants arrived, giving each one an imperious expression as they entered the building, before hanging up his robes in the closet and going to school.
Antain walked slowly toward the schoolhouse, enjoying the temporary glimmers of sun overhead. It would be cloudy in an hour. It was always cloudy in the Protectorate. Fog clung to the cobbled streets like tenacious moss. Not many people were out and about that early in the morning. Pity, thought Antain. They are missing the sunlight. He lifted his face and felt that momentary rush of hope and promise.
He rarely asked questions. He rarely spoke. Especially now, since the one person whom he wouldn’t have minded speaking to—and even better, if she spoke back to him in return—had left school entirely. She had joined the novitiate at the Sisters of the Star. Her name was Ethyne, and though Antain had never exchanged three words in succession with her, still he missed her desperately, and now only went to school day after day on the wild hope that she would change her mind and come back. It had been a year. No one ever left the Sisters of the Star. It wasn’t done. Yet, Antain continued to wait. And hope.
The Sisters of the Star always had an apprentice—always a young boy. Well, he wasn’t much of an apprentice—more of a serving boy, really. They hired him when he was nine and kept him on until he was dispatched with a single note.
Every little boy received the same note. Every single time.
“We had high hopes,” it always said, “but this one has disappointed us.”
Some boys served only a week or two. Antain knew of one from school who had only stayed a single day. Most were sent packing at the age of twelve—right when they had begun to get comfortable. Once they became aware of how much learning there was to be had in the libraries of the Tower and they became hungry for it, they were sent away.
Antain had been twelve when he received his note—one day after he had been granted (after years of asking) the privilege of the library. It was a crushing blow.
The Sisters of the Star lived in the Tower, a massive structure that unsettled the eye and confounded the mind. The Tower stood in the very center of the Protectorate—it cast its shadow everywhere.
The Sisters kept their pantries and auxiliary libraries and armories in the seemingly endless floors below ground. Rooms were set aside for bookbinding and herb mixing and broadsword training and hand-to-hand combat practice. The Sisters were skilled in all known languages, astronomy, the art of poisons, dance, metallurgy, martial arts, découpage, and the finer points of assassinry. Above ground were the Sisters’ simple quarters (three to a room), spaces for meeting and reflection, impenetrable prison cells, a torture chamber, and a celestial observatory. Each was connected within an intricate framework of oddly-angled corridors and intersecting staircases that wound from the belly of the building to its deepest depths to the crown of its skyviewer and back again. If anyone was foolish enough to enter without permission, he might wander for days without finding an exit.
During his years in the Tower, Antain could hear the Sisters’ grunts in the practice rooms, and he could hear the occasional weeping from the prison rooms and torture chamber, and he could hear the Sisters engaged in heated discussions about the science of stars and the alchemical makeup of Zirin bulbs or the meaning of a particularly controversial poem. He could hear the Sisters singing as they pounded flour or boiled down herbs or sharpened their knives. He learned how to take dictation, clean a privy, set a table, serve an excellent luncheon, and master the fine art of bread-slicing. He learned the requirements for an excellent pot of tea and the finer points of sandwich-making and how to stand very still in the corner of a room and listen to a conversation, memorizing every detail, without ever letting the speakers notice that you are present. The Sisters often praised him during his time in the Tower, complimenting his penmanship or his swiftness or his polite demeanor. But it wasn’t enough. Not really. The more he learned, the more he knew what more there was to learn. There were deep pools of knowledge in the dusty volumes quietly shelved in the libraries, and Antain thirsted for all of them. But he wasn’t allowed to drink. He worked hard. He did his best. He tried not to think about the books.
Still, one day he returned to his room and found his bags already packed. The Sisters pinned a note to his shirt and sent him home to his mother. “We had high hopes,” the note said. “But this one has disappointed us.”
He never got over it.
He hadn’t set foot in the Tower since his apprenticeship days, but Antain felt that it was high time to visit the Sisters, who had been, for him, a sort of short-term family—albeit odd, standoffish, and, admittedly, murderous. Still. Family is family, he told himself as he walked up to the old oak door and knocked.
(There was another reason, of course. But Antain could hardly even admit it to himself. And it was making him twitch.)
His little brother answered. Rook. He had, as usual, a runny nose, and his hair was much longer than it had been when Antain saw it last—over a year ago now. “Are you here to take me home?” Rook said, his voice a mixture of hope and shame. “Have I disappointed them, too?”
“It’s nice to see you, Rook,” Antain said, rubbing his little brother’s head. “But no. You’ve only been here a year. You’ve got plenty of time to disappoint them. Is Sister Ignatia here? I’d like to speak to her.”
Rook shuddered, and Antain didn’t blame him. Sister Ignatia was a formidable woman. And terrifying. But Antain had always gotten on with her, and she always seemed fond of him. The other Sisters made sure that he knew how rare this was. Rook showed his older brother to the study of the Head Sister, but Antain could have made it there blindfolded. He knew every step, every stony divot in the ancient walls, every creaky floorboard. He still, after all these years, had dreams of being back in the Tower.
“Antain!” Sister Ignatia said from her desk. She was, from the look of it, translating texts having to do with botany. Sister Ignatia’s life’s greatest passion was for botany. Her office was filled with plants of all description—most coming from the more obscure sections of the forest or the swamp, but some coming from all around the world, via specialized dealers at the other end of the Road.
“Why, my dear boy,” Sister Ignatia said as she got up from her desk and walked across the heavily perfumed room to take Antain’s face in her wiry, strong hands. She patted him gently on each cheek, but it still stung. “You are many times more handsome today than you were when we sent you home.”
“Thank you, Sister,” Antain said, feeling a familiar stab of shame just thinking of that awful day when he left the Tower with a note.
“Sit, please.” She looked out toward the door and shouted in a very loud voice. “BOY!” she called to Rook. “BOY, ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?”
“Yes, Sister Ignatia,” Rook squeaked, flinging himself through the doorway at a run and tripping on the threshold.
Sister Ignatia was not amused. “We will require lavender tea and Zirin blossom cookies.” She gave the boy a stormy look, and he ran away as though a tigress was after him.
Sister Ignatia sighed. “Your brother lacks your skills, I’m afraid,” she said. “It is a pity. We had such high hopes.” She motioned for Antain to sit on one of the chairs—it was covered with a spiky sort of vine, but Antain sat on it anyway, trying to ignore the prickles in his legs. Sister Ignatia sat opposite him and leaned in, searching his face.
“Tell me, dear, are you married yet?”
“No, ma’am,” Antain said, blushing. “I’m a bit young, yet.”
Sister Ignatia clucked her tongue. “But you are sweet on someone. I can tell. You can hide nothing from me, dear boy. Don’t even try.” Antain tried not to think about the girl from his school. Ethyne. She was somewhere in this tower. But she was lost to him, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“My duties with the Council don’t leave me much time,” he said evasively. Which was true. “Of course, of course,” she said with a wave of her hand. “The Council.” It seemed to Antain that she said the word with a little bit of a sneer in her voice. But then she sneezed a little, and he assumed he must have imagined it.
Sister Ignatia tipped her head to one side and gave him a searching look. “To be frank, my dear, dear boy, I was stunned that you made the decision to join that particular body, and I confess I assumed that it was not your decision at all, but your... lovely mother’s.” She puckered her lips unpleasantly, as though tasting something sour.
And this was true. It was entirely true. Joining the Council was not Antain’s choice at all. He would have preferred to be a carpenter. Indeed, he told his mother as much—often, and at length —not that she listened.
“Carpentry,” Sister Ignatia continued, not noticing the shock on Antain’s face that she had, apparently, read his mind, “would have been my guess. You were always thusly inclined.”
“You—” She smiled with slitted eyes. “Oh, I know quite a bit, young man.” She flared her nostrils and blinked. “You’d be amazed.”
Rook stumbled in with the tea and the cookies, and managed to both spill the tea and dump the cookies on his brother’s lap. Sister Ignatia gave him a look as sharp as a blade, and he ran out of the room in a panicked rush, as though he was already bleeding.
“Now,” Sister Ignatia said, taking a sip of her tea through her smile.
“What can I do for you?”
“Well,” Antain said, despite the mouthful of cookie.
“I just wanted to pay a visit. Because I hadn’t for a long time. You know. To catch up. See how you are.”
Sister Ignatia smiled. “Liar,” she said, and Antain hung his head. She gave his knee an affectionate squeeze. “Don’t be ashamed, poor thing,” she soothed. “You’re not the only one who wishes to gawk and gape at our resident caged animal. I am considering charging admission.”
“Oh,” Antain protested.
“No, I—” She waved him off. “No need. I completely understand. She is a rarity. And a bit of a puzzle. A fountain of sorrow.” She gave a bit of a sigh, and the corners of her lips quivered, like the very tip of a snake’s tongue. Antain wrinkled his brow.
“Can she be cured?” he asked.
Sister Ignatia laughed. “Oh, sweet Antain! There is no cure for sorrow.” Her lips unfurled into a wide smile, as though this was most excellent news.
“Surely, though,” Antain persisted. “It can’t last forever. So many of our people have lost their children. And not everyone’s sorrow is like this.”
She pressed her lips together. “No. No, it is not. Her sorrow is amplified by madness. Or her madness stems from her sorrow. Or perhaps it is something else entirely. This makes her an interesting study. I do appreciate her presence in our dear Tower. We are making good use of the knowledge we are gaining from the observation of her mind. Knowledge, after all, is a precious commodity.” Antain noticed that the Head Sister’s cheeks were a bit rosier than they had been the last time he was in the Tower. “But honestly, dear boy, while this old lady appreciates the attention of such a handsome young man, you don’t need to stand on ceremony with me. You’re to be a full member of the Council one day, dear. You need only ask the boy at the door and he has to show you to any prisoner you wish to see. That’s the law.” There was ice in her eyes. But only for a moment. She gave Antain a warm smile. “Come, my little Elderling.”
She stood and walked to the door without making a sound. Antain followed her, his boots clomping heavily on the floorboards.
Though the prison cells were only one floor above them, it took four staircases to get there. Antain peeked hopefully from room to room, on the off chance that he might catch sight of Ethyne, the girl from school. He saw many members of the novitiate, but he didn’t see her. He tried not to feel disappointed. The stairs swung left and right and pulled down into a tight spiral into the edge of the central room of the prison floor. The central room was a circular, windowless space, with three Sisters sitting in chairs at the very middle with their backs facing one another in a tight triangle, each with a crossbow resting across her lap.
Sister Ignatia gave an imperious glance at the nearest Sister. She flicked her chin toward one of the doors.
“Let him in to see number five. He’ll knock when he’s ready to leave. Mind you don’t accidentally shoot him.”
And then with a smile, she returned her gaze to Antain and embraced him. “Well, I’m off,” she said brightly, and she went back up the spiral stair as the closest Sister rose and unlocked the door marked “5.”
She met Antain’s eyes and she shrugged.
“She won’t do much for you. We had to give her special potions to keep her calm. And we had to cut off her pretty hair, because she kept trying to pull it out.” She looked him up and down. “You haven’t got any paper on you, have you?” Antain wrinkled his brow.
“Paper? No. Why?” The Sister pressed her lips into a thin line. “She’s not permitted to have paper,” she said.
“Why not?”
The Sister’s face became a blank. As expressionless as a hand in a glove. “You’ll see,” she said.
And she opened the door.
The cell was a riot of paper. The prisoner had folded and torn and twisted and fringed paper into thousands and thousands of paperbirds, of all shapes and sizes. There were paper swans in the corner, paper herons and cranes on the chair, and tiny paper hummingbirds suspended from the ceiling. Paper ducks; paper robins; paper swallows; paper doves...
Antain’s first instinct was to be scandalized. Paper was expensive. Enormously expensive. There were papermakers in the town who made fine sheaves of writing stock from a combination of wood pulp and cattails and wild flax and Zirin flowers, but most of that was sold to the traders, who took it to the other side of the forest. Whenever anyone in the Protectorate wrote anything down, it was only after much thought and consideration and planning. And here was this lunatic. Wasting it. Antain could hardly contain his shock. And yet. The paperbirds were incredibly intricate and detailed. They crowded the floor; they heaped on the bed; they peeked out of the two small drawers of the nightstand. And they were, he couldn’t deny it, beautiful. They were so beautiful. Antain pressed his hand on his heart.
“Oh my,” he whispered.
The prisoner lay on the bed, fast asleep, but she stirred at the sound of his voice. Very slowly, she stretched. Very slowly, she pulled her elbows under her sides and inched her way to a small incline. Antain hardly recognized her. That beautiful black hair was gone, shaved to the skin, and so were the fire in her eyes and the flush of her cheeks. Her lips were flat and drooping, as though they were too heavy to hold up, and her cheeks were sallow and dull. Even the crescent moon birthmark on her forehead was a shadow of its former self—like a smudge of ashes on her brow. Her small, clever hands were covered with tiny cuts—Paper, probably, Antain thought—and dark smudges of ink stained each fingertip. Her eyes slid from one end of him to the other, up, down, and sideways, never finding purchase. She couldn’t pin him down. “Do I know you?” she said slowly.
“No, ma’am,” Antain said.
“You look”—she swallowed—“familiar.”
Each word seemed to be drawn from a very deep well. Antain looked around. There was also a small table with more paper, but this was drawn on. Strange, intricate maps with words he didn’t understand and markings he did not know. And all of them with the same phrase written in the bottom right corner: “She is here; she is here; she is here.”
Who is here? Antain wondered.
“Ma’am, I am a member of the Council. Well, a provisional member. An Elder-in Training.”
“Ah,” she said, and she slumped back down onto the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. “You. I remember you. Have you come to ridicule me, too?”
She closed her eyes and laughed.
Antain stepped backwards. He felt a shiver at the sound of her laugh, as though someone was slowly pouring a tin of cold water down his back. He looked up at the paper hummingbirds hanging from the ceiling. Strange, but all of them were suspended from what looked like strands of long, black, wavy hair. And even stranger: they were all facing him. Had they been facing him before?
Antain’s palms began to sweat.
“You should tell your uncle,” she said very, very slowly, laying each word next to the one before, like a long, straight line of heavy, round stones, “that he was wrong. She is here. And she is terrible.”
She is here, the map said.
She is here.
She is here.
She is here.
But what did it mean?
“Who is where?” Antain asked, in spite of himself. Why was he talking to her? One can’t, he reminded himself, reason with the mad. It can’t be done. The paper hummingbirds rustled overhead. It must be the wind, Antain thought.
“All I know is this,” the prisoner said as she pulled herself unsteadily to her feet. The paper hummingbirds began to lift and swirl.
It is just the wind, Antain told himself. “I know where she is.” I am imagining things. “I know what you people have done.” Something is crawling down my neck. My god. It’s a hummingbird. And—OUCH! A paper raven swooped across the room, slicing a wing across Antain’s cheek, cutting it open, letting him bleed.
Antain was too amazed to cry out.
“But it doesn’t matter. Because the reckoning is coming. It’s coming. It’s coming. And it is nearly here.”
She closed her eyes and swayed. She was clearly mad. Indeed, her madness hung about her like a cloud, and Antain knew he had to get away, lest he become infected by it. He pounded on the door, but it didn’t make any sound. “LET ME OUT,” he shouted to the Sisters, but his voice seemed to die the moment it fell from his mouth. He could feel his words thud on the ground at his feet. Was he catching madness? Could such a thing happen? The paperbirds shuffled and shirred and gathered. They lifted in great waves.
“PLEASE!” he shouted as a paper swallow went for his eyes and two paper swans bit his feet. He kicked and swatted, but they kept coming.
“You seem like a nice boy,” she said. “Choose a different profession. That’s my advice.” She crawled back into bed. Antain pounded on the door again. Again his pounding was silent.
The paperbirds squawked and keened and screeched. They sharpened their paper wings like knives. They massed in great murmurations—swelling and contracting and swelling again. They reared up for the attack. Antain covered his face with his hands. And then they were upon him.
She didn’t only dream of paper; she had it, too. No one knew how. Every day the Sisters of the Star entered her room and cleared away the maps that she had drawn and the words that she had written without ever bothering to read them. They tutted and scolded and swept it all away. But every day, she found herself once again awash in paper and quills and ink. She had all that she needed.
A map. She drew a map. She could see it as plain as day. She is here, she wrote. She is here, she is here, she is here.
His wanderings brought him, as they always did whether he liked it or not, to the base of the Tower. His home, for a short, wondrous time in his youth. And the place where his life changed forever. He shoved his hands in his pockets and tilted his face to the sky.
“Why,” said a voice. “If it isn’t Antain. Back to visit us at last!” The voice was pleasant enough, though there was, Antain realized, a bit of a growl, buried so deeply in the voice that it was difficult to hear.
“Hello, Sister Ignatia,” he said, bowing low. “I am surprised to see you out of your study. Can it be that your wondrous curiosities have finally loosened their grip?”
It was the first time they had exchanged words face-to-face since he was injured, years now. Their correspondence had consisted of terse notes, hers likely penned by one of the other sisters and signed by Sister Ignatia. She had never bothered to check on him—not once—since he was injured. He tasted something bitter in his mouth. He swallowed it down to keep himself from grimacing.
“Oh, no,” she said airily. “Curiosity is the curse of the Clever. Or perhaps cleverness is the curse of the Curious. In any case, I am never lacking for either, I’m afraid, which does keep me rather busy. But I do find that tending my herb garden gives me some amount of comfort—” She held up her hand. “Mind you don’t touch any leaves. Or flowers. And maybe not the dirt, either. Not without gloves. Many of these herbs are deadly poisonous. Aren’t they pretty?”
“Quite,” Antain said. But he wasn’t thinking much about the herbs.
“And what brings you here?” Sister Ignatia said, narrowing her eyes as Antain’s gaze drifted back up to the window where the madwoman lived.
Antain sighed. He looked back at Sister Ignatia. Garden dirt caked her work gloves. Sweat and sunshine slicked her face. She had a sated look about her, as if she had just eaten the most wonderful meal in the world and was now quite full. But she couldn’t have. She had been working outside. Antain cleared his throat.
“I wanted to tell you in person that I would not be able to build you the desk you requested for another six months, or perhaps a year,” Antain said. This was a lie. The design was fairly simple, and the wood required was easily obtainable from the managed forest on the western side of the Protectorate.
“Nonsense,” Sister Ignatia said. “Surely you can make some rearrangements. The Sisters are practically family.”
Antain shook his head, let his eyes drift back to the window. He had not really seen the madwoman—not up close anyway—since the bird attack. But he saw her every night in his dreams. Sometimes she was in the rafters. Sometimes she was in her cell. Sometimes she was riding the backs of a flock of paperbirds and vanishing into the night.
He gave Sister Ignatia half a smile. “Family?” he said. “Madam, I believe you have met my family.” Sister Ignatia pretended to wave the comment away, but she pressed her lips together, suppressing a grin.
Antain glanced back at the window. The madwoman stood at the narrow window. Her body was little more than a shadow. He saw her hand reach through the bars, and a hummingbird flutter near, nestling in her palm. The hummingbird was made of folded paper. He could hear the dry rustle of wings from where he stood.
Antain shivered.
“What are you looking at?” Sister Ignatia said.
“Nothing,” Antain lied. “I see nothing.”
“My dear boy. Is there something the matter?”
He looked at the ground. “Good luck with the garden.” “Before you go, Antain. Why don’t you do us a favor, since we cannot entice you to apply your clever hands to the making of beautiful things, no matter how many times we ask?”
“Madam, I—” “You there!” Sister Ignatia called. Her voice instantly took on a much harsher tone. “Have you finished packing, girl?”
“Yes, Sister,” came a voice inside the garden shed—a clear, bright voice, like a bell. Antain felt his heart ring. That voice, he thought. I remember that voice. He hadn’t heard it since they were in school, all those years ago.
“Excellent.” She turned to Antain, her words honeyed once again. “We have a novice who has opted not to apply herself to an elevated life of study and contemplation, and has decided to reenter the larger world. Foolish thing.”
Antain was shocked. “But,” he faltered. “That never happens!”
“Indeed. It never does. And it will not ever again. I must have been deluded when she first came to us, wanting to enter our Order. I shall be more discerning next time.”
A young woman emerged from the garden shed. She wore a plain shift dress that likely fit her when she first entered the Tower, shortly after her thirteenth birthday, but she had grown taller, and it barely covered her knees. She wore a pair of men’s boots, patched and worn and lopsided, that she must have borrowed from one of the groundskeepers. She smiled, and even her freckles seemed to shine.
“Hello, Antain,” Ethyne said gently. “It has been a long time.”
Antain felt the world tilt under his feet.
Ethyne turned to Sister Ignatia.
“We knew one another at school.”
“She never talked to me,” Antain said in a hoarse whisper, tilting his face to the ground. His scars burned. “No girls did.”
Her eyes glittered and her mouth unfurled into a smile. “Is that so? I remember differently.”
She looked at him. At his scars. She looked right at him. And she didn’t look away. And she didn’t flinch. Even his mother flinched. His own mother.
“Well,” he said. “To be fair. I didn’t talk to any girls. I still don’t, really. You should hear my mother go on about it.”
Ethyne laughed. Antain thought he might faint.
“Will you please help our little disappointment carry her things? Her brothers have gotten themselves ill and her parents are dead. I would like all evidence of this fiasco removed as quickly as possible.”
If any of this bothered Ethyne, she did not show it. “Thank you, Sister, for everything,” she said, her voice as smooth and sweet as cream. “I am ever so much more than I was when I walked in through that door.”
“And ever so much less than you could have been,” Sister Ignatia snapped. “The youth!” She threw up her hands. “If we cannot bear them, how can they possibly bear themselves?” She turned to Antain. “You will help, won’t you? The girl doesn’t have the decency to show even the tiniest modicum of sorrow for her actions.” The Head Sister’s eyes went black for a moment, as though she was terribly hungry. She squinted and frowned, and the blackness vanished. Perhaps Antain had imagined it. “I cannot tolerate another second in her company.”
“Of course, Sister,” he whispered. Antain swallowed. There seemed to be sand in his mouth. He did his best to recover himself. “I am ever at your service. Always.”
Sister Ignatia turned and stalked away, muttering as she went. “I would rethink that stance, if I were you,” Ethyne muttered to Antain. He turned, and she gave him another broad smile. “Thank you for helping me. You always were the kindest boy I ever knew. Come. Let’s get out of here as quickly as possible. After all these years, the Sisters still give me the shivers.”
She laid her hand on Antain’s arm and led him to her bundles in the garden shed. Her fingers were calloused and her hands were strong. And Antain felt something flutter in his chest—a shiver at first, and then a powerful lift and beat, like the wings, flying high over the forest, and skimming the top of the sky.
The potions he received every week from the Sisters of the Star helped, but these days they seemed to help less than usual. And it annoyed him.
Ethyne stood as the Grand Elder arrived, flanked by two heavily armed Sisters of the Star. She was, by all appearances, utterly unafraid. It was galling, really. The Grand Elder knitted his eyebrows in a way that he assumed was imposing. This had no effect. To make it worse, it seemed that she not only knew the two soldiers to the right and left of him but was friends with them as well. She brightened as she saw the ruthless soldiers arrive, and they smiled back.
“Lillienz!” she said, smiling at the soldier on his left. “And my dear, dear Mae,” she said, blowing a kiss to the soldier on his right.
Ethyne was sixteen at the time, and known throughout the Protectorate as a remarkably clever girl—quick hands, quick wits. When the Sisters of the Star arrived after her mother’s funeral and offered her a place in their novitiate, Ethyne hesitated only for a moment. Her father was gone; her mother was gone; her older brothers (the ones not taken away) had all married and didn’t come around the house that often. It was too sad. There was a boy in her class who tugged at her heart—the quiet boy in the back—but he was from one of the important families. People who owned things. There was no way that he would give her a second look. When the Sisters of the Star came, Ethyne packed her things and followed them out.
But then she noticed that in all the things she learned at the Tower—about astronomy and botany and mechanics and mathematics and vulcanology—not once was the Wicked Witch mentioned. Not once. It was as though she didn’t actually exist.
And then she noticed the fact that Sister Ignatia never seemed to age.
And then she noticed the padded steps, stalking the hallway of the Tower each night.
And then she saw one of her novitiate sisters weeping over the death of her grandfather, and Sister Ignatia staring at the girl—all hunger and muscle and predatory leap.
Ethyne had spent her entire childhood carrying the heavy weight of her mother’s stories. Indeed, everyone she knew bore the same weight. Their backs bent under the burden, and their sorrowing hearts were as heavy as stones. She joined the Sisters of the Star to seek the truth. But the truth about was nowhere to be found.
A story can tell the truth, she knew, but a story can also lie. Stories can bend and twist and obfuscate. Controlling stories is power indeed. And who would benefit most from such a power? And over time, Ethyne’s eye drifted less and less toward the forest, and more toward the Tower casting its shadow over the Protectorate.
It was then that Ethyne realized that she had learned all that she needed from the Sisters of the Star, and that it was time to go. Best go before she lost her soul.
And so it was, with her soul intact, that Ethyne now returned to the Tower, still linking arms with Mae.
Antain’s youngest brother, Wyn, met them at the door. Of all of Antain’s brothers, Wyn was Ethyne’s favorite. Ethyne threw her arms around him and held him tight—and as she did so, she pressed a piece of paper into his hand.
“Can I trust you?” she whispered almost silently into his ear. “Will you help me save my family?”
Wyn said nothing. He closed his eyes and felt the voice of his sister-in-law wind around his heart like a ribbon. There was little kindness in the Tower. Ethyne was the kindest person he knew. He gave her one extra hug, just to make sure she was real.
“I believe my former Sisters are meditating, dear Wyn,” Ethyne said with a smile. Wyn trembled when she said his name. No one ever called him by his name in the Tower—he was simply the boy. He resolved right then to help Ethyne in whatever she wished. “Will you please take me to them? And while you’re at it, there is something else I would ask you to do.”
The Sisters were assembled for their morning meditation—an hour of silence, followed by singing, followed by a quick sparring session. Ethyne and Mae entered the room just as the first notes of song began to drift down the stone hallways. The Sisters’ voices stopped as Ethyne stepped into their midst. The baby gurgled and cooed. The Sisters stared with open mouths. Finally one Sister spoke.
“You,” she said.
“You left us,” said another.
“No one ever leaves,” said a third.
“I know,” Ethyne said. “Knowledge is a terrible power indeed.” It was the unofficial motto of the Sisterhood. No one knew more than the Sisters. No one had more access to knowledge. And yet here they were. Without an inkling. She pressed her lips together. Well, she thought. That changes today.
“I left. And it wasn’t easy. And I am sorry. But my dear Sisters, there is something I must tell you before I leave again.” She leaned in and kissed the forehead of her son. “I must tell you a story.”
Wyn had a key ring on his belt. The next step in the plan.
“I don’t want to take up any more of your time, so I will leave now with those who are willing. To the rest of you, I say, thank you. I treasured my time as Sister to you all.”
Ethyne came striding out of the room with nine Sisters following behind. She gave Wyn a brief nod. He quickly closed the door and wound the chain around the handles in a tight knot, securing it with the lock. He pressed the key into Ethyne’s hand. She wrapped her fingers around his own and gave a tender squeeze.
“The novitiate?”
“In the manuscript room. They’ll be doing their copywork until suppertime. I locked the door and they have no idea they are locked in.”
Ethyne nodded. “Good,” she said. “I don’t want to frighten them. I’ll speak to them in a bit. First, let’s release the prisoners. The Tower is meant to be a center for learning, not a tool of tyranny. Today the doors are opening.”
“Even to the library?” Wyn said hopefully.
“Especially the library. Knowledge is powerful, but it is a terrible power when it is hoarded and hidden. Today, knowledge is for everyone.” She hooked her arm in Wyn’s, and they hurried through the Tower, unlocking doors.
The first voice didn’t answer right away. It swung its head very slowly from side to side. The swallow was behind a thicket of leaves. It hardly breathed. Finally the first voice sighed.
“You were perhaps seeing one of the abandoned villages. There are many on this side of the woods. After the last eruption, the people fled, and were welcomed into the Protectorate. That’s where the magicians gathered them. Those who were left, anyway. I never knew what happened to them after that. They couldn’t come back into the woods, of course. Too dangerous.”
.... (reveal of the sorrrow eater being ignatia) http://dl.oceanofpdf.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/OceanOfPDF.org_The-Girl-Who-Drank-the-Moon-Kelly-Barnhill.pdf
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“How is our patient doing this morning?” the Head Sister said to her at the dawning of each day. “How much sorrow presses on her poor, poor soul?” She was hungry. The madwoman could feel it.
None, the madwoman could have said if she felt like speaking. But she didn’t. For years, the madwoman’s sorrows had fed the Head Sister. For years she felt the predatory pounce. (Sorrow Eater, the madwoman discovered herself knowing. It was not a term that she had ever learned. She found it the way she found anything that was useful—she reached through the gaps of the world and worried it out.) For years she lay silently in her cell while the Head Sister gorged herself on sorrow.
And then one day, there was no sorrow to be had. The madwoman learned to lock it away, seal it off with something else. Hope. And more and more, Sister Ignatia went away hungry.
“Clever,” the Sister said, her mouth a thin, grim line. “You have locked me out. For now.” You have locked me in, the madwoman thought, a tiny spark of hope igniting in her soul. For now.
The madwoman pressed her face to the thick bars in her thin window.
Antain never felt more sure of what he had to do. He left the next morning, well before the sun rose, with his wife still asleep in the bed. He couldn’t bear to say good-bye.
The madwoman stood at her window, her face resting on the bars. She watched the young man slide out of the quiet house. She had been waiting for him to appear for hours. She didn’t know how she knew to wait for him—only that she did. The sun had not yet come up, and the stars were sharp and clear as broken glass, spangled across the sky. She saw him slip out of his front door and close it silently behind him. She watched him as he laid his hand on the door, pressing his palm against the woodwork. For a moment, she thought he might change his mind and go back inside—back to the family that lay asleep in the dark. But he didn’t. He closed his eyes tight, heaved a great sigh, and turned on his heel, hurrying down the dark lane toward the place on the town wall where the climb was least steep.
The madwoman blew him a kiss for luck. She watched him pause and shiver as the kiss hit him. Then he continued on his way, his steps noticeably lighter. The madwoman smiled.
There was a life she used to know. There was a world she used to live in, but she could hardly remember it. Her life before was as insubstantial as smoke. She lived, instead, in this world of paper. Paperbirds, paper maps, paper people, dust and ink and pulped wood and time.
The young man walked in the shadows, checking this way and that to see if anyone followed him. He had a satchel and a bedroll slung across his back. A cloak that would be too heavy during the day and not nearly warm enough at night. And swinging at his hip, a long, sharp knife.
“You must not go alone,” the madwoman whispered. “There are dangers in the woods. There are dangers here that will follow you into the woods. And there is one who is more dangerous than you could possibly imagine.”
When she was a little girl, she had heard stories. But the stories were wrong—and what truth they had was twisted and bent. The Wicked Witch was here, in the Tower. And she would rip you to shreds if given the chance.
The madwoman stared at the window’s iron bars until they were no longer iron bars at all, but paper bars. She tore them to shreds. And the stones surrounding the window’s opening were no longer stones—just damp clumps of pulp. She scooped them out of the way with her hands. The paperbirds around her murmured and fluttered and squawked. They opened their wings. Their eyes began to brighten and search. They lifted as one into the air, and they streamed through the window, carrying the madwoman on their collective backs, and flowed silently into the sky.
The Sisters discovered the madwoman’s escape an hour after dawn. There were accusations and explanations and search parties and forensic explorations and teams of detectives. Heads rolled. The cleanup was a long, nasty job. But quiet, of course. The Sisters couldn’t afford to let news of the escape leak into the Protectorate. The last thing they needed was to allow the populace to be getting ideas. Ideas, after all, are dangerous.
Grand Elder Gherland ordered a meeting with Sister Ignatia just before lunch, despite her protestations that today simply was too difficult.
“I don’t care two wits about your feminine complications,” the Grand Elder roared as he marched into her study. The other Sisters scurried away, shooting murderous glances at the Grand Elder, which thankfully he did not notice.
Sister Ignatia felt it best not to mention the escaped prisoner. Instead, she called for tea and cookies and offered hospitality to the fuming Grand Elder.
“Pray, dear Gherland,” she said. “Whatever is this about?” She regarded him with hooded, predatory eyes.
“It has happened,” Gherland said wearily.
Unconsciously, Sister Ignatia’s eyes flicked in the direction of the now-empty cell.
“It?” she asked.
“My nephew. He left this morning. His wife is sheltering at my sister’s house.”
Sister Ignatia’s mind began to race. They couldn’t be connected, these two disappearances. They couldn’t. She would have known... wouldn’t she? There had been, of course, a marked drop in available sorrow from the madwoman. Sister Ignatia hadn’t given it much thought. While it was annoying to have to go hungry in one’s own home, there was always sorrow aplenty throughout the Protectorate, hanging over the town like a cloud.
Or normally there was. But this blasted hope stirred up by Antain was spreading through the town, disrupting the sorrow. Sister Ignatia felt her stomach rumble.
She smiled and rose to her feet. She gently laid her hand on the Grand Elder’s arm, giving it a tender squeeze. Her long, sharp nails pierced his robes like catlike claws, making him cry out in pain. She smiled and kissed him on both cheeks.
“Fear not, my boy,” she said. “Leave Antain to me. The forest is filled with dangers.” She pulled her hood over her head and strode to the door. “I hear there’s a witch in the woods. Did you know?” And she disappeared into the hall.
Sister Ignatia felt herself growing weaker by the minute. She had done her best to swallow all the sorrow she could—she couldn’t believe how much sorrow hung about the town! Great, delicious clouds of it, as persistent as fog. She really had outdone herself, and she had never, she realized now, given herself the proper admiration that was her due. A whole kingdom transformed into a veritable well of sorrow. An ever-filling goblet. All for her. No one in the history of the Seven Ages had ever before managed such a feat. There should be songs written about her. Books, at the very least.
But now, two days without access to sorrow, and she was already weak and worn. Shivery. Her wellsprings of magic depleting by the second. She would need to find that boy. And fast.
She paused and knelt beside a small stream, scanning the nearby forest for signs of life. There were fish in the stream, but fish are accustomed to their lot in life and don’t experience sorrow as a general rule. There was a nest of starlings overhead, the hatchlings not two days old. She could crush the baby birds one by one, and eat the mother’s sorrow—of course she could. But the sorrow of avians was not as potent as mammalian sorrow. There wasn’t a mammal for miles. Sister Ignatia sighed. She gathered what she needed to build a makeshift scrying device—a bit of volcanic glass from her pocket, the bones of a recently killed rabbit, and an extra bootlace, because it was helpful to include the most useful thing on hand. And nothing is more useful than a bootlace. She couldn’t build it with the same level of detail as the large mechanical scryers she had in the Tower, but she wasn’t looking for very much. She couldn’t see Antain. She had an idea of where he was. She was fairly certain she could see a blur where she thought he might be, but something was blocking her view.
“Magic?” she muttered. “Surely not.” All the magicians on earth—at least everyone who knew what they were doing—had perished five hundred years earlier when the volcano erupted. Or nearly erupted. The fools! Sending her with her Seven League Boots to rescue the people in the forest villages. Oh, she certainly had. She’d gathered them all safe and sound into the Protectorate. All their endless sorrows, clouding together in one place. All according to plan.
She licked her lips. She was so hungry. She needed to survey her surroundings.
The Head Sister held her scrying device up to her right eye and scanned the rest of the forest. Another blur. What is the matter with this thing? she wondered. She tightened the knots. Still a blur. Hunger, she decided. Even basic spells are difficult when one is not operating at full strength.
Sister Ignatia eyed the starling nest.
She scanned the mountains. Then she gasped.
“No!” she shouted. She looked again. “How are you still alive, you ugly thing?”
She rubbed her eyes and looked a third time. “I thought I killed you,” she whispered. “Well. I guess I shall have to try again. Troublesome creature. You almost foiled me once, but you failed. And you shall fail again.”
First, she thought, a snack. Shoving her scrying device into her pocket, Sister Ignatia climbed up to the branch with the starling nest. She reached in and grabbed a tiny, wriggling nestling. She crushed it in one fist as the horrified mother looked on. The mother starling’s sorrow was thin. But it was enough. Sister Ignatia licked her lips and crushed another nestling. And now, she thought, I must remember where I hid those Seven League Boots.
A pair of glowing eyes. The muscled lope. A woman—tall, strong, and clearly magic. And her magic was sharp, and hard, and merciless. Like the curved edge of a blade.
"That woman there, the one who is all hunger and prowl, is the reason why. She is a Sorrow Eater. She spreads misery and devours sorrow; it is the worst sort of magic. She is the reason why so many children were raised motherless, and why so many mothers were childless. I suggest we prevent her from making more sorrow, shall we?”
There, in the space where the Sorrow Eater’s heart should have been, was a tiny sphere—hard, shiny, and cold. A pearl. Over the years, she had walled off her heart, again and again, making it smooth and bright and unfeeling. And she likely hid other things in there as well—memories, hope, love, the weight of human emotion. Piercing the shine of the pearl.
The Sorrow Eater pressed her hands to her head. “Someone is taking my magic.”
“Hush, you imbecile! You have no idea what you’re talking about.” The stranger wobbled, as though her legs had been turned suddenly turned to dough.
“Every night in the Tower,” the madwoman said, “you went from cell to cell, looking for sorrow. And when I learned to bottle mine up, to lock it away, you would snarl and howl.”
“You’re lying,” the Sorrow Eater croaked.
But they weren’t—one could see the awful hunger of the Sorrow Eater. She could see her—even now—desperately looking for the tiniest bit of sorrow. Anything to fill the dark void inside her. “You don’t know a single thing about me.”
One could see the pearly heart of the Sorrow Eater floating in the air between them. It had been hidden away for so long that Luna suspected the Sorrow Eater had forgotten it was even there. She turned it around and around, looking for chinks and crevices. There was a memory here. A beloved person. A loss. A flood of hope. A pit of despair. How many feelings can one heart hold? Infinite, so goes the thought. The way the universe is infinite. It is light and dark and endless motion; it is space and time, and space within space, and time within time. And she knew: there is no limit to what the heart can carry.
It’s awful to be cut off from your own memories. If I know anything, I know that now. Here. Let me help you...
The pearl cracked. The Sorrow Eater’s eyes went terribly wide.
“Some of us choose love over power. Indeed, most of us do.”
The Sorrow Eater had been moved to the hospital wing of the Tower. Once people understood what Sister Ignatia had done, there were calls for her imprisonment, but with every moment, the life that had been so extended in her dwindled, bit by bit.
With a flick of her left wrist, she forced it open. The crack. And sorrow rushed out. “Oh!” the Sorrow Eater said, pressing her hands to her chest.
“My mother died,” the Sorrow Eater mumbled, barely noticing the enormous dragon bearing down on her. “My mother and my father and my sisters and my brothers. My village and my friends. All gone. All that was left was sorrow. Sorrow and memory and memory and sorrow.”
Possibly-Fyrian grabbed the Sorrow Eater by the waist, holding her up high. She went limp, like a doll.
“I should burn you up!” the dragon said.
Fyrian shut his eyes. He did not put down the Sorrow Eater. Great tears poured from beneath his clenched lids and fell in steaming dollops to the ground.
Look deeper, past the layers of memory wrapped around the heart-turned-pearl. What one saw astonished. “She walled off her sorrow. She covered it up and pressed it in, tighter and tighter and tighter. And it was so hard, and heavy, and dense that it bent the light around it. It sucked everything inside. Sorrow sucking sorrow. She turned hungry for it. And the more she fed on it, the more she needed. And then she discovered that she could transform it into magic. And she learned how to increase the sorrow around her. She grew sorrow the way a farmer grows wheat and meat and milk. And she gorged herself on misery.”
The Sorrow Eater sobbed. Her sorrow leaked from her eyes and her mouth and her ears. Her magic was gone. Her collected sorrow was going. Soon there would be nothing at all.
The Sorrow Eater had been moved to the hospital wing of the Tower. Once people understood what Sister Ignatia had done, there were calls for her imprisonment, but with every moment, the life that had been so extended in that woman dwindled, bit by bit. Any day now. Any moment. They had no idea what the Sorrow Eater thought.
The day the first wave of Star Children returned to the Protectorate, the former Sisters threw open the windows of the hospital.
The Sorrow Eater by now looked as old as dust. Her skin crinkled over her bones like old paper. Her eyes were sightless and hollow. “Close the window,” she rasped. “I can’t bear to hear it.”
The Sisters left the windows open wide. Cries of joy wafted into the room. The Sorrow Eater cried out in pain.
