by E. E. Holmes
Savvy heaved a shuddery sigh. “Ah, Jess. I honestly don’t know if I can do it.”
“Yes, you can. He was always there for you. You can show your gratitude by being there for him this one last time. Come on. I’ll be right beside you.”
Savvy looked down at herself and made a sound that would have been a laugh if she’d been capable of laughing in that moment. “Look at me. I’m a disaster.” She looked up at me. “And so are you.”
“Do you want to run to your room to change? The ceremony starts in less than five minutes. I’m not really sure if we’ve got time to—”
But Savvy was already shaking her head. “If I go to my room now, you won’t get me out again. Let’s just go now before I lose my nerve. I don’t reckon Bertie will care if I’m a bit damp.”
And so, we got to our feet and walked, putting one foot in front of the other, moving relentlessly forward, all the way through the castle halls, down the stairs, out the front doors, and across the lawns. People stared at us, whispering behind their hands as we passed, pointing at our dripping clothes and sopping hair. We didn’t care. I held on to Savvy’s arm, steering her through the stone pillars and between the benches of solemn-faced onlookers to her seat, right in the very front row. I sat beside her, where Phoebe would have sat, if she were well enough to attend. She was gripping my hand so tightly that my fingers were starting to go numb, but I ignored it.
As we sat down, I caught Hannah’s eye in the row behind us. Her voice, followed by Milo’s, popped into my head through the connection.
“Oh my goodness, what happened to you two?”
“What the hell? Why are you both dripping wet?”
I shook my head. “I’ll tell you later.” I let my reply slip through the connection just as I closed it off. I couldn’t have anyone else’s emotions buzzing around in my brain like trapped bees. My own—and Savvy’s—would be more than enough to deal with.
“Here,” Hannah whispered this aloud, thrusting a thin white taper candle into my hand just as Frankie reached over and handed one to Savvy. All around us, Durupinen were touching the tips of their candles to each other, and tiny orange flames were springing to life at the ends of them. It took Savvy three attempts to light her candle, her hands were shaking so badly, and then she stared at the thing, trembling in her hand, as though she had never seen a candle before and was half-afraid of it. I winked at her and pulled the candle gently from her hand before she burned herself with dripping wax. “I’ll handle the props,” I whispered to her. “Just breathe, okay?”
We both jumped in fright as a single beat of a drum resounded through the courtyard. The whispering, murmuring crowd hushed at once. A second drum beat rolled through the space like thunder, then another, and another, the pauses between them shorter each time, until they condensed into a somber marching cadence. Then a set of bagpipes began to play in the distance, perhaps from the window of one of the towers, though it was impossible to tell, as the sound seemed to have no direction, no source, but instead to resound in the ground below our feet, or else to rise from the very air itself as a cool breeze swept through the courtyard.
The sounds of marching boots joined the beat of the drum as two long rows of Caomhnóir paraded through the central archway, Seamus in the lead. Each of their faces was stoic and grave as they processed down the aisle, eyes fixed over the head of the crowd. Celeste rose from her seat and ascended the platform, hands clasped in front of her, her head bowed respectfully as the Caomhnóir marched toward her. Beside me, Savvy was trembling violently from a combination of emotion and the chill of the wind, which was picking up now and raising goosebumps on our skin and whipping our hair around our faces. The candles in my hand sputtered and smoked, but did not go out.
The very last Caomhnóir in the procession bore an elaborately carved stretcher upon their shoulders. Long, spear-like torches had been thrust through the four corners of the stretcher, so that flames streamed above it like flags in the wind. Upon the stretcher, a long white shroud shielded Bertie’s body from view, and yet drew every eye to him. The gossamer fabric clung to the shape of him, so that every detail was apparent—the turned-up tip of his nose, his hands folded upon his abdomen, the toes of his boots thrust upward toward the darkening sky.
I looked nervously over at Savvy, but she had gone oddly still. The sight of Bertie’s body, rather than peaking her emotions, seemed to have quelled them. Her trembling had stopped. Her hands, which had been twisting anxiously around the hem of her top, had fallen motionless into her lap. She did not avert her eyes, but gazed directly at him, following the pale, billowing shape of him as he passed by our seats and was borne onto the platform.
I couldn’t decide if this new stillness made me feel less worried about her, or more, but I did not have time to puzzle it out. The echoing notes of the bagpipes had faded away and, with a last resounding thud, the drumming and marching stopped. Several spirits hovered in the shadows nearby, watching with equal solemnity.
The Caomhnóir had assembled in two rows, stretching across the platform and down the stairs on either side. They faced not the crowd, but Bertie’s body, which had been carried to the very center of the platform, still upon his Brothers’ shoulders. They stood silently as Celeste walked to the center of the platform, where she met Seamus.
My only experience with funerals had involved eulogies, and so I expected Celeste to turn to us, to deliver some sort of speech, but she did not. Instead, she extended her hands toward Seamus. In them, she held a neatly folded cloth of pale purple. The firelight glinted off the golden threads that ran through it as they both laid hands upon it and began, together, to unfold it carefully. Then they stepped together back to the plinth and draped the cloth across Bertie’s chest. It was a sort of stole, long and rectangular, with golden triskeles stitched onto it.
Then Seamus’s voice boomed out over the crowd, reciting words in old Gaelic that I could only understand snatches of. “Spirit.” “Courage.” “Guardian.” “Clan.” It didn’t matter if the details were hazy. We all knew the depth and breadth of what he was expressing, all felt it filling the courtyard as though it were riding the current of the wind. Then Seamus turned to Bertie, his expression twisted and pained, and knelt on a single knee, pressing one fist to his chest as he bowed his head.
Every Caomhnóir in the courtyard followed suit. They remained with their heads bowed as the drum in the distance beat seven times. Then they rose as one, and stood at attention again.
“Please rise,” Celeste called to the assembled Durupinen, and we all complied at once.
The wide velvet curtain behind the platform dropped to the ground with a swooshing sound, revealing a tall pyre built of meticulously stacked logs. A few gasps arose from the assembly, Hannah’s amongst them. Now the height of the platform made sense: the Caomhnóir could place the stretcher right on top of the plinth without so much as raising it above their shoulders. We watched as they did so, sliding it smoothly onto the topmost logs until its handles slipped into grooves that had been notched into them to hold it. The wind carried a strong scent of gasoline through the courtyard. It burned my nostrils and made me lightheaded. Then four Caomhnóir reached up and pulled the torches from the four corners of the stretcher and stood, holding them aloft, awaiting their order to set the pyre ablaze.
Seamus began to speak again. I barely listened, catching snatches of it as I stared down at the candle flames dancing in my hand. It was full of words like “duty” and “honor,” words that were supposed to fill up empty, aching places with something resembling meaning and sense. The Caomhnóir echoed him, chanting words back to him, but their voices only made the words sound hollower, as though repeating them enough times drained the sense and meaning right out of them.
Then the bagpipes began to play again, and the drum began to beat. The four torch bearers stepped forward and, as one, thrust their torches into gaps in the pyre. At once the flames began to climb and lick their way up the logs, blackening t
he wood and sending plumes of dark smoke toward the sky, which was now deepening from the pink of sunset to the violet of twilight.
Beside me, Savvy dropped my hand and took a sudden step forward. I looked over at her to see that she had her eyes fixed on Bertie’s body, as yet untouched by the flames. She took another step forward.
“Savvy?” I whispered to her. “Savvy, are you okay?”
She did not acknowledge me at all. I wasn’t sure if she’d even heard me. She took another step forward.
“Savvy, what are you doing?” I hissed. I reached a hand toward her, trying to pull her fingers back into mine, but she batted it away, still staring transfixedly at the pyre. Slowly—almost dreamily, like a sleepwalker—she crossed the empty expanse of ground between our seats and the platform. She stood at the base of the steps for a moment, her still sopping clothes dripping gently onto the flagstones. Then she began to ascend the stairs.
Murmurs rippled through the onlookers, and though I could not hear their words, I knew the questions they must be asking themselves: What is she doing? Why is she soaking wet? Why is she interrupting the service like this? The Caomhnóir were all turning to stare at her as well, glancing at each other and at Seamus for instructions, but Seamus himself simply stood there, an expression of utter bewilderment on his face.
It was Celeste who stepped forward as Savvy reached the top of the steps. “Savannah?” She spoke the name carefully, as though she were afraid to startle Savvy. “Savannah? Are you all right, my dear?”
Savvy didn’t answer. It was as though Celeste had not even spoken. Savvy walked straight across the platform until she was standing directly in front of the pyre, the heat from the now roiling flames blowing her hair back from her face.
My heart thudded in my chest, fear rooting me to the spot. What was she doing? What the hell was she doing?
For several seconds, no one moved. Then Savvy reached out a hand toward the nearest Caomhnóir and pulled a long, curved dagger from the sheath on his belt. The Caomhnóir reached out and grabbed her wrist and raised his other hand to disarm her but then stopped. He was staring into Savvy’s fierce face, and whatever he saw there stayed his hand. Still looking into her eyes, he released her wrist and dropped both of his hands to his sides.
Celeste started forward, opening her mouth in some form of protestation, but it was Seamus who thrust out an arm and shook his head slowly, eyes still on Savvy. Celeste still looked fearful, but she stayed where she was, obeying the silent order that Seamus had given her.
Savvy turned back to Bertie’s body, tears and sweat streaming down her face. The orange glow of the flames caught at the fiery color of her hair, which looked, for a moment, to be made of flame itself. Then Savvy reached back and gathered that flaming hair within her hand, gripping it tightly at the back of her neck. Then she raised the gleaming dagger, set the blade to the first of the fiery strands and let out a low, shuddering moan. The dagger flashed back and forth, and within a few moments, the entire length of hair came away in her hands.
The dagger clattered to the wooden floor of the platform. Savvy held the hair up and looked at it, turning it over once in her hand before tossing it, with a keening cry, right onto Bertie’s clasped hands.
She stood, shoulders shaking, chest heaving, watching her hair and the boy beneath it burn. Then she turned, walked down the steps, straight out of the courtyard and into the twilit grounds. The eye of every Caomhnóir fixated on her as one by one, they knelt down and bowed their heads in acknowledgement of her tribute.
No one dared follow her.
6
Make-overs
FRANKIE CLOSED HER BOOK, sighing so deeply that the sound might’ve originated all the way down in her toes. “Where do you reckon Savvy is?” she asked quietly, to no one in particular.
It was nearly three o’clock in the afternoon. We were all sitting in the library at Fairhaven. Raindrops were racing each other along blurry tracks down the windowpanes. I’d promised to help Hannah gather a list of past sanctions of Durupinen–Caomhnóir relationships, to help bolster the research for her proposed legislation, which would be heard in a few weeks. I was starting to regret my decision for two reasons. First, many of the documents were in various forms of Gaelic and Old Britannic, so deciphering them was giving me a pounding headache. Second, each one was a reminder of the many hearts that had been broken and lives destroyed by a rule put in place in an effort to forestall our eventual birth. The guilt was crippling.
Hannah looked up from an ancient scroll with an equally deep sigh and replied to Frankie. “I was just wondering the same thing. No one has seen much of her since the funeral, have they?” She looked around at all of us as though hoping someone could offer a different answer.
“I don’t even think she came back to her room last night,” Mackie said in a whisper, as one of the Scribes shuffled by, arms full of ancient tomes. “I was waiting for her, just sort of hoping I could say something—anything—that might help. But she never turned up. I waited until close to dawn. I suppose it’s just as well,” she added, looking a bit sheepish. “I don’t know what I would’ve said if she had turned up. Probably just stammered at her like a prat.”
“I don’t think any of us would’ve known what to say,” I told her. “I mean, it’s just a myth, isn’t it—words that can actually help somebody in a situation like that? Those words just don’t exist.”
We were all quiet for a few seconds. I’m not sure what anyone else was thinking about, but I thought back to when I’d lost my mom, to when I’d wandered through the world aimlessly, every thought and feeling smothered under a suffocating blanket of horror. No words could have reached me in there. There was nothing that anyone could say. And honestly, I probably would’ve resented them for trying—for even suggesting that the pain wasn’t going to end me. It would have felt minimizing—insulting, almost.
Yes, it is that bad. No, there is nothing you can do to make it better. Just let me ache until the aching is done and leave me the hell alone.
“I kept an eye out for her this morning, when Tia left for London,” I said, pulling myself out of that pile of baggage. “After the cab picked Tia up, I took a walk around outside. No sign of her.”
“Ah, damn. I forgot to wish Tia luck on her exam,” Frankie groaned.
“That’s okay,” I told her. “We all had a lot going on last night. I’m just sorry she has to take an exam at all, with everything that’s been going on. But that’s Tia for you. Work is the best medicine for anything that’s ailing her. Her classmates will walk out of that exam feeling drained. She’ll walk out of there feeling like she could run a marathon. She’s just weird like that.”
Frankie frowned and opened her mouth, presumably to tell me that wasn’t weird at all, but Hannah forestalled her by bringing the conversation back around to our original topic.
“Do you think someone should go look for Savvy?” she asked, biting her lip nervously. “I mean, I’m sure she needs space, and maybe we should give it to her, but I would hate for her to feel alone if she needs somebody to talk—”
As though Hannah’s words had summoned her, Savvy barreled through the library doors like a ginger-topped tornado. The Scribe at the front desk scowled at her, and began hissing some sort of admonishment. Savvy rolled her eyes, barely looking at the woman, and continued to march across the room, flipping two fingers over her shoulder for good measure.
“Oi there, you three,” she said casually, dropping into the only empty chair left at the table. “All right?”
It was only then, when she stopped her forward progress, that we noticed Milo floating along in her wake like a shadow. He had a satisfied smile on his face, which seemed odd to me, until I took a better look at Savvy.
I struggled to thread my words together. “Savvy… I… your hair!”
“Ah, yeah, I know, right?” Savvy asked running her fingers through it. “Haven’t I ever told you not to let me near swords when I’m that pissed? Or
microphones. Swords and microphones, big no-no’s for ol’ Savvy after a bender like that.”
“No, it’s just…” I had no way to say what I wanted to say without sounding totally rude. “Well, it’s just that you… you look like you’ve just gotten back from the salon or something. I mean, no offense, but you sort of… chopped your hair off with a blunt dagger. And now it looks like you just had it professionally styled. I just don’t think that’s likely, given the way you hacked it off.”
“Oh, that,” Savvy said, grinning broadly. “Well, first of all, sorry about that. I sort of… well, flipped out last night. I don’t even really know what made me do it. I just had this overwhelming need to… pay tribute, I guess. I didn’t really think it through. And once I’d done it… well, I couldn’t really undo it, could I? So, once I’d had a good cry and come to my senses, Milo took pity on me.”
We all looked over at Milo. His wide grin now made just a bit more sense. I should have recognized it. That was a familiar look on his face: the look of someone who had just achieved the unachievable: turning a fashion disaster into something ready to strut along the catwalk.
“Milo, you did that?” Hannah asked, clearly incredulous. “But… how?”
Milo gave a little shrug of his shoulders. The gesture was an attempt at modesty but failed miserably at achieving it. “I couldn’t let my girl walk around with a hack job like that,” he said. “Even if she did do it for, like, totally honorable reasons. She deserved to smile when she looked in the mirror, after everything she’s been through. So, we Habitated.”
“Habitated?” I asked, looking back and forth between Savvy and Milo.
Milo saw the look on my face and winked. “Aw, come on. Don’t be jealous. You know you’ll always be my first.”
I rolled my eyes, but didn’t reply, turning back to Savvy instead.
“That’s right,” said Savvy. “We just got a little cozy and personal. It actually felt good, having someone else in my head, so I could listen to someone else’s thoughts instead of wallowing in my own. A few snips here, a few snips there…”