by Bowes, K T
We retraced our steps as before, emotion tamped down by the pressing need for safety. I felt nothing, concentrating my energy on navigating the forest before us and reaching our previous way point. I felt grateful for the opportunity not to think. Limah’s death hung over us, weighing our footsteps and shuttering Sorrel’s chat. He didn’t once ask for food. Regret accompanied the loss, lighting a fire of anguish which must eventually explode as some deep battle cry of grief and loathing. I pitied the one who would face it. We channelled the pain into our footsteps, using our untapped agony to press onward and honing a vengeance from which we could never return.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Limah's Gift
“Where now?” Sorrel sat up and rolled his coat collar away from his face. He yawned and stretched, using the sole of his boot to force snow from the entrance of our hidey. The mouse which spent the night scrabbling around in the leaves behind us bounded into the daylight, its shadow creating dancing monsters in his wake. Sorrel turned his gaze towards me and I shrugged.
Two fallen trees and last year’s autumn leaves had provided a ready shelter from the blizzard which drove us to ground the night before. I’d removed my boots in the darkness with pursed lips, but regretted not taking off my thick socks. Welded to the open blisters on my heels, they looked crusted in patches and the thought of replacing my boots filled me with dread. Sorrel winced and nodded. “Mine too,” he said, wrinkling his nose towards his feet. “Best not to take off your shoes again.” His gaze roved across the bag at my side and I sensed him wanting its contents. I’d spent the night defending it from the marauding mouse. Tossing it across, I noted his look of guilt as his fingers loosed the buckle on the strap. “It feels wrong that my stomach complains,” he sighed, “when Limah will never eat again.”
A clenching in my gut bent me forward and I remained still for a moment. Sorrel’s fingers squeezed my shoulder. “Sorry,” he whispered.
I shook off the grief and gave a shrug to dislodge his hand. The agony of my silence drove me insane. I wanted to rail and scream loud enough to trigger an avalanche, imagining hurling myself face down in the snow and allowing myself to become buried alive. Hosta’s hatred of me paled into insignificance next to her betrayal of Limah. She would join a long list of those who would experience the sharp edge of the sword. Once I found it.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Sorrel demanded, his mouth filled with stale bread. “You know I’ll follow you anywhere, Este, but we only have enough food for today.” He peered into the bag at my look of shock, then licked his lips. “Probably only enough for me, actually.”
I snatched the bag back, the strap trailing across Sorrel’s thigh. A cursory look inside proved him right. Days of skimping, saving and stealing had fed him for a single revolution of the invisible sun. I suspected the child may prove a complete liability and watched crumbs fall from his chapped lips as I contemplated sending him away. His companionship comforted me on the lonely landscape but his stomach would get us both killed.
“What about the thing?” Sorrel asked. He leaned across and tapped my right pocket, pulling back at the murderous glint in my eye. “Will the path-delineator not help you find whatever you seek?”
I shrugged and tapped the hilt of my sword beneath the jacket. Sorrel’s eyes widened. “A sword?”
With furrowed brow, I pulled the smooth metal case from my pocket. Pressing the catch, I flipped the lid upward where it hinged on a tiny brass mechanism. The white face with its intricate symbols stared up at me, giving nothing away.
“Tap it,” Sorrel urged, leaning across me to take it. I resisted, holding the object out of reach and scrambling to my knees. His expression clouded. “I wouldn’t steal it, Este. Let me show you what Limah did.”
My pause held a barrage of unspoken insults at his use of the Master’s name, bandied about without thought for my loss. For once, I felt him attune to my thoughts and he looked away. “I miss him too, Este,” he whispered. “Shall we call him another name instead? Do you think that might help?”
I sat back on my haunches and handed over the treasured object, watching it slide into his palm with ease. My nod contained a world of grief. Sorrel turned it in his hand so the face glinted against the snow white backdrop and sighed. “The old drone you hated so much gossiped in the corridors with Hosta,” he said. “He wished to become your counselor, but you gave the role to Limah.” He looked up, his eyes wide and sincere. “I never heard you use the title, but he died as such. Let’s call him Counselor now and hope that perhaps he can hear us and send help.”
My small smile offered encouragement and Sorrel relaxed. I hoped the belated honour might lessen the sting for a man I had valued far less than he deserved. It sat well in my thoughts and I wished I had said it while the chance still existed. Removing his gloves, Sorrel handled the path-delineator with care. I gasped in surprise as he raised it to his lips and placed a tiny kiss on the lid. He answered my curious look with a wavering voice. “This is the exact same one, Este,” he breathed. “This is Limah’s. I know it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
A Hidden Message
Sorrel turned the object over in his fingers and I watched as his face collapsed into a screwed up expression of sadness. “It’s his,” he maintained. “I recognise this dent in the case. It reflected the light in a particular way.”
Confusion knitted my brow into a firm line. The dent appeared little more than a thumb depression from constant use over time. A flicker of doubt sent unease into my mind. I suspected Sorrel wished it to be Limah’s, keeping the Counselor’s memory alive though a shiny but useless bauble. The lumpy mattress had troubled me forever, long before I decided to investigate. Limah’s dignity strode into my inner vision and his stoic faithfulness condemned my selfish nature. Gone. A flicker of abandonment threatened to eclipse my judgement as the child within me raged in a tantrum of self-pity. For once I kept her silent, rewriting my own sorry history. My simile didn’t leave me. They killed her between them, Galveston and his Swift allies. Gritting my teeth, I held out my hand for the path-delineator and allowed Limah to continue his counsel despite his absence.
The snow fell around us as we examined the tool and I adopted Sorrel’s made-up name for it. The sturdy brass outer protected a delicate series of pointing indicators, housed in three separate dials. Together they contributed to the image of a face with two larger white dials as eyes and the smaller one as a nose below the others. A set of Melitto words contributed the mouth, smiling up as the inscription traced the arced lower edge of the face. They left no room for doubt as to the identity of the owner.
“Can you read it to me?” Sorrel asked, jabbing a finger at the words. His brow furrowed and a hasty swallow betrayed his shame. “I don’t know much Melitto writing. No writing at all, not even in Forlornn. My mother promised to learn me but never found the time. I picked up some letters but not enough to get by.”
Reaching out a hand, I squeezed his upper arm. It explained his lack of understanding when I scribed messages of frustration into the cavern’s sandy floor. I judged him a child of limited intelligence when he simply lacked an alphabet. I chewed my lower lip before pointing to my mouth. Empty of words, I had no way to communicate the inscription’s meaning.
“Mime it,” he suggested, his eyes lighting up in amusement. “It’s snowing hard again so we should wait for a lull before setting out.” He wrinkled his nose. “I’ll do my ablutions while you think of how to act it out.” With a flurry of leaves, he pushed into the blizzard and I heard him crunch behind our cozy folly.
He returned before I had figured how to demonstrate the sentence. Limah’s voice echoed in my mind over and over and I sensed he’d scribed it on the delicate mother-of-pearl face with one of his tools. They were exactly the words he would say and I knew he intended them for me. Sorrel brought snowflakes and a miserable draught back with him, nosing into the hidey and showering me with cold droplets. “It’s better than havin
g to poop in the labyrinth,” he exclaimed as I slapped his shoulder. “I lied about Limah filling the food cave with soil.” He waggled his eyebrows. “It wasn’t all composted. How do you think the vegetables grew so well?”
I placed my fingers into my mouth and pretended to gag, drawing a high-pitched giggle from his lips. But his face grew quickly serious. “Did the Counselor write those letters?” he demanded and I pressed my palm over my chest and nodded. I believed so with all my heart. “For us?” he asked, his face open and vulnerable. I nodded, unable to destroy his hope by claiming the message all for myself. “Okay,” he said, leaning back against the tree trunk. “Begin.”
I mimed the lifting of an object to my nose and sniffed, closing my eyes in pretence of enjoyment and pleasure.
“Smell, sniff!” Sorrel shouted and I waggled my wrist to indicate it wasn’t the whole story. I jabbed a finger at the thing I appeared to smell and his eyes widened as he threw out the name of objects I might stick beneath my nose on any given day. Some of them appeared so random, it made me anxious for his sanity. I recalled no memory of having wanted to sniff a smelly sock. “Flower!” he yelled before finally, “Bloom!”
In his excitement, he flung his arms wide and banged the roof. The fragile nest of willow branches bowed and showered us with leaf debris and ice. Irritated with him, I contemplated abandoning the game, but he begged and apologised. The blizzard outside continued, cutting visibility to nothing. In the absence of a ready excuse, I resumed the charade. My fingers pretended to dig into the icy floor beneath me, churning up an increasing amount of water as it melted with our body heat. It reminded me that my breeches were soaked through to my underwear and made me unable to ignore the discomfort any longer.
“Dig. Put. Bury.” Sorrel grew anxious as the action continued and I shook my head. I took the imaginary bloom and pretended to sink it into the hole. “Plant!” he yelled, banging his head against the tree trunk and rubbing at the bruise. “Plant. Plant the bloom.”
“No.” I mouthed the word and shook my head, holding up a finger to tell him to wait. Spreading my hands, I drew my shoulders up to my ears and mouthed the next word, hoping he understood. The shallow shake of my head and confused expression added to the clue.
“Where?” He got it immediately and saw my relief. Until he opened his mouth again. “Where do we plant the bloom?”
I shook my head, grappling with the ready frustration which budded in my chest. I crossed my arms to indicate he must switch the clues back to the order in which I’d given them. His brow furrowed in confusion. And so I began again.
“Bloom where planted?” Sorrel got the message but not the intent and he frowned. I tapped his lips and nodded, asking him to start again. “Bloom where ouch!” His eyes widened as I clapped a hand over his mouth before he could finish the last word. The slapping sound echoed around our hidey and I tried not to enjoy punishing him for soaking me. My finger tapped his chest. “Me,” he said.
I shook my head and grabbed his free hand, pressing his index finger to the point over my heart. His reply flushed my cheeks with embarrassment. “I love you?” He said it as though he wasn’t sure and I feared he might get the wrong message altogether. “You love me?” Hope budded in his eyes like a wildfire and I fought the urge to slap him again as his mind went exactly the wrong way. The shake of my head shattered his dreams of a kiss and he wrinkled his nose in disgust.
“Again,” I mouthed and held up the imaginary flower.
“Bloom where,” he began. I tapped my chest with his finger. “You?” It would have to suffice. “Planted.”
“Bloom where you planted me?”
Exasperation screwed my features into an ugly knot and my fingers twitched towards the sword tucked against the edge of our nest. Sometimes Sorrel’s intuition surprised me, but not enough to suffer the dull moments forever. The urge to abandon him and start walking despite the white out, made me reach for my boots. My painful heels tingled at the prospect. Sorrel snatched at my hand before it lay hold of the cold leather.
“Bloom where you’re planted.”
I turned to look at him and saw he fought emotion. Letting go and leaning his head back against the tree, he gazed at the rough ceiling and gave his tears a moment to recede before falling and destroying his image of himself as a warrior. “It’s exactly what the Counselor would say, isn’t it? Do your best with what you have. In the place you find yourself. Even if it’s not where you want to be. That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it? Our best in bad circumstances.”
I pressed my fingers over my lips and let the pain distract me as they bruised against my teeth. A willow cave in a blizzard with an irritating companion was no place to fall apart and render myself useless. I gave a slow nod without meeting his gaze again. My jacket rustled as Sorrel squeezed my forearm. “Let’s do it for him then,” he whispered. “Let’s make him proud.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Path-delineator
The path-delineator raised more questions than answers. Sorrel and I spent hours poring over its dials to no avail. Trapped inside the snow cave while the weather raged outside in a growing agony of torturous birth pains, we stared at the mottled white face until it grew too dark to see.
“This one shows direction,” Sorrel concluded again, tapping the smaller dial and watching the ornate needle jump. He took it from my hand and turned in the tiny space, the indicator moving with him. “We kept an almost straight line from the labyrinth which means it must be to the south, in that direction. North and south are marked with dots and I’m thinking south must be nearest the front catch where you’d hold it in your hand. This tiny red line must be true north.” His eyes glazed in the dim light as he remembered the origin of our journey. “Perhaps we can return one day and ask for the Counselor’s body. Do you think they’ll give it?”
I shrugged and ran a gloved hand over my face. The tug in my chest had ceased its respectful silence and begun again. It made me over eager to battle the weather just to appease it. Sorrel patted my shoulder and gave a wan smile which didn’t reach his eyes. “No matter, Este. I don’t think he cared much what happened to his body, do you? He seemed a man more concerned with wholeness of mind.”
I closed my eyes and embraced painful thoughts of Limah. His reluctant smile, his capable hands and his series of daring rescues. My heart clenched at the memory of his injuries, healed in the hive but still scarred in the Outer. He spent my childhood safeguarding a girl he must have despised, his silence perhaps harder than any other physical task he performed. The Abel Pastor lowered himself to protect me, knowing I wouldn’t have listened to his words of wisdom, anyway. My fingers fluttered to my mute lips and I recognised the irony. He chose to keep quiet while the deep pit within myself inflicted it upon me. Punishment or salvation? I hadn’t yet worked it out. I held my hand out for the smooth case of the path-delineator, grateful when Sorrel passed it back.
The second dial twitched, the movement so slight I almost missed it. My lips parted and I nudged Sorrel with my elbow and stuffed my palm under his nose. Sorrel cocked his head and thought for a moment before tapping his chest. I let the object fall into his hand, observing as the dial’s needle twitched again. A smile crossed his lips and he peered closer. “It’s reading some measurement,” he concluded. I rolled my eyes at his genius. The needle slumped into a neutral position. Sorrel tipped the path-delineator sideways and the directional needle switched position in its desire to align with the northerly mark. The top right one remained fixed in place, raised a hair’s breadth. “See,” he said, jerking his head towards the face. I nodded and held out my gloved hand, watching as he slid the brass case into my palm.
Another tiny leap of the needle excited us both. “Is it me?” I mouthed, tapping my chest with my other hand.
Sorrel nodded and excitement budded behind his shimmering irises. “I think it is.” He tugged at my fingers. “Take off your glove.”
I obliged, cold air nipping at my e
xposed fingers. The path-delineator nestled in my palm, warmer than the outside temperature. The needle jerked a tiny fraction to the left of the largest mark. Sorrel’s brow knitted. “It just knows you,” he concluded. “Direct contact makes no difference but your proximity matters.” He pushed aside our curtain of willow twigs and peeked outside. “I wonder if taking it away from you a short distance would make it move.” He pulled his head back in, bringing a dusting of snow on the peak of his cap.
I shook my head but handed it over, so I could plunge my cold fingers back into the glove. I saw the dial return to its resting place, indicating nothing. Sorrel nodded. “You’re probably right, Este. It doesn’t matter how far I take it, the needle drops as soon as it’s out of your possession.” He sighed and tapped the face again. “But I wonder what it measures about you.” His brow furrowed as he handed it back. It slid into my hand and on a whim, I pushed it inside the glove so it could nestle against the skin of my right palm. Knowing it once belonged to Limah made me feel closer to him and the sense of regret abated.