“Yes,” Kate replies. She sounds wide awake.
It’s easy to find my way to her bed. I sit on the end of it, clasp my arms round my knees. “He was here again,” I whisper. I’ve said it now. “Simon.”
Kate sits up quickly. Her face is close enough for me to see, but I can’t work out her expression. “Where?”
“In the woods. He was asking for you.”
She smiles and her face lights up.
“He’s from the Outside, Kate. He can’t come back.” I want to tell her that I know. I know their secret.
“Did anyone else see him?”
I look down at my arms, crossed over my legs. “Jack.”
“Jack saw Simon?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“He says if he sees him again, he’s going to tell the Kindreds.” Sophie moves in the bed nearby, but she’s still fast asleep. “You have to make him stay away, Kate.” But she shakes her head. Panic rushes into me. “You have to. He’s from the Outside. He will poison you.”
“That’s rubbish. Ellis is from the Outside. And Sophie. And Linda.”
“That’s different.”
“Why?” Kate stares at me and I can’t answer her. “I like him,” she says, so quietly.
“But it’s wrong, Kate.” And I think of Jack. How hurt he looked when he saw Simon in the trees.
“No. These feelings aren’t wrong.” She closes her fingers into a fist and brings them close to her heart.
And I understand her. Because ever since I saw Ellis, I have felt it too.
“What are you going to do?”
Kate’s eyes are wide as she looks at me. “I don’t know,” she says.
There is a noise from the corridor. Just the house creaking, as it does when we sleep.
“I don’t know,” Kate whispers again.
No. I push him away. My arms are weak, but I can slap at him. And I shake my head so that the spoon can’t go between my teeth.
No.
My life, not yours. My choice, not yours.
He kicks me hard on the arm before he goes. The pain seeps into the pain in my stomach, the pain in my head. Little snakes swimming in my blood, squeezing past my bones.
I am with my daughter. Today it is the blonde one and we hold hands and run through the meadow. I pick flowers and weave them into her hair. Her hair is growing now and it is like mine. Maybe she is mine.
I’m too tired to stand up and see through the window. So I lie here and I am with her and I hold her hand.
Hold my hand, my daughter.
I am going.
Hold my hand.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The light switches on. We are snatched from sleep. Rachel is standing in the doorway and I can see that the sun hasn’t risen outside. It’s not a deep black, though. Morning is close.
“Papa S. wants us all in the Eagle Room,” she says.
“Is it Ellis?” I ask, the words coming before I’m fully awake.
“No, it isn’t Ellis,” she answers.
Sophie stretches in her bed. She slept head to toe with Ruby again last night. They’ve done that the last five nights, since Ellis was taken away.
We’re quiet as we walk down the stairs, having dressed sleepily. It’s cold. Autumn is definitely coming. In the Eagle Room, we gather in a circle. I smile as I see, tucked into the corner, the trunk with the messages sewn into the hems. The room works its magic as it always does, and as we stand and hold hands, I know everyone must feel the same as I do. A happiness lifting from the floor, circling the closed curtains, touching the painted red walls. This is the first time I’ve felt happy since Ellis left. I hope that Linda can feel it too. Nothing can hurt us here.
When Papa S. comes in, we kiss our palms and face them toward him. He smiles and takes his place in the middle of us all. I won’t look at Kate, but squeeze her hand to let her know I know.
“My family,” Papa S. says, his voice swimming toward me. He turns, looking at each of us. I smile when his eyes meet mine. “Nature made us. Nature knows us. Every movement, every thought, Nature sees.” A prickle of fear sweeps around my neck. I must concentrate on Papa S., his wise, wonderful face helping to guide us.
“We cannot all be perfect,” he says, “but we can right our wrongs. Clean the dirt away. Make ourselves pure again …” He pauses. Turns slowly. “So. I have made a box. Made from Nature’s gift of wood. Big enough to hold those thoughts that weigh you down. It will take your wrong and we will lock it in. And we shall send it in flames so you may be cleansed.” His voice is rising as he holds his hand toward the ceiling.
I catch sight of Jack and his face is lifted toward Papa S. He looks like our real Jack again, the Jack who is never unhappy. And seeing him gives me hope. Hope for everything. Simon will go. Kate will be happy. Ellis will come home and my thoughts will be clean.
Papa S. is walking from the room. Bobby looks up at me, his eyes sleepy.
“It’s good,” I say quietly to him. “We can put all of our bad thoughts into the box.” He looks confused. “Watch,” I say, and I point to Kindred John as he takes Rachel first. No one says a word. I look over at Kate, but she is staring toward the curtains and I can’t tell her thoughts. Heather is here and I have a moment of fear for Elizabeth, alone upstairs. But Heather smiles at me and nods, and my worry disappears.
One by one, we are taken by Kindred John. When it’s my turn, he reaches out his hand for me and I take it. His skin on mine makes a memory shrivel deep within me. We have to walk from the room, down the corridor and then knock on Papa S.’s door.
“Enter,” says Papa S. Kindred John leaves me and closes the door behind him.
On the floor is a long wooden box. It is like the coffin Kindred John once made to bury the deer we found dead in the meadow. But this coffin is much bigger. I could lie down inside it.
Papa S. must see my surprise. “I know,” he says. “But Nature told me it had to be like this. There are so many impure thoughts.” He looks at me, right into me. I feel his hands reaching down and dragging out the bones of Simon. “Put those thoughts into the box,” he says. “Spit them. Be free of them.”
I spit into the coffin. The secret of Simon. The impure thoughts of Ellis. I spit them away and I feel free. Those thoughts are dead.
“Thank you,” I say and I run up to Papa S. and reach up to him and kiss his cheek. I want to hold on to him, onto all that is good. He seems surprised. But pleased. He puts his arms round me and I feel his goodness seep into all the hollows left by my bad thoughts. He kisses my hair.
“You have done well,” he says and then he points me to the door. I walk past the coffin and out of his room.
Kindred John tells me to go out and wait with the others on the driveway. I am surprised by the light. It’s gray and the sun isn’t strong, but the night has nearly gone. Everyone who went before me is standing around a huge pile of sticks and logs. A bonfire waiting to be lit.
Flames. These are the flames. Papa S. will burn the coffin. The flames will take our bad thoughts forever.
Ruby jumps into my arms, beaming. “There’s going to be a fire.”
In all my life, I only remember one bonfire. Years ago, before Ruby was even born. All I remember is the heat and the strength of the flames.
I beckon Bobby over and he comes to hold my hand. Together we watch Kindred Smith as he flutters like a moth, tucking in bits of stray wood. We wait like this. One by one, our family comes out to the bonfire. I watch each of their faces in turn. Jack looks so happy. His smile is free. Even Kate’s eyes come alive at the sight of the logs piled high.
I wish that Elizabeth could see it. I will remember the crackling and tell her of the heat on my skin.
We wait.
Then they come, Papa S. and Kindred John. They carry the coffin between them. It looks heavy with our bad thoughts. It weighs down their shoulders and I want to help, but they brush away Kindred Smith and Jack when they step forward
. Carefully the coffin is put on the bonfire. Then they begin to pile more sticks on top of the wooden box. Now we can help.
The bonfire gets higher and higher until the coffin is covered.
Then Papa S. kisses his palm, faces it to the sky. We do the same.
“You are free!” he shouts. And I feel free. The coffin with my badness inside is hidden in the sticks and I want to dance with happiness.
Papa S. scrunches up some paper and pushes it in. He lights a match, presses it to the paper, and it catches, the tiny flame growing quickly. Papa S. walks around, lights another and another. The sticks crackle and hiss as the flames step onto them, growing bigger and bigger.
We have to move back. Ruby jumps from my arm and she and Sophie laugh and clap their hands. Bobby still holds on to me, the flames reflected in his eyes. Yellows, reds, greens, growing taller and hotter, burning the logs. I see flashes of the coffin, the flames beginning to eat at its wood. I watch the boiling hot logs. The wood of the coffin burning away.
There is a hand. In the bonfire, there is a hand. In the coffin, there is hair. It fizzes up and is gone. I see a face. I am screaming and pointing, but the fire is so loud.
“Jack!” I scream, and he looks where I point, but the flames are thick and he cannot see.
And now I can’t. But it was there. A face, a hand. I know it. I must still be screaming because Kindred John has his arms around me. I am screaming and pointing, but Kindred John holds my arms down. He pulls my head into him, but I want to see. I need to be sure. I push myself away from him and the heat of the flames scratches my face as I step closer.
“Elizabeth!” I am screaming. Is it her?
They’re pushing us inside and I’m running, through the front door, across the hall. The stairs are too many. I am at the top. My feet loud on the corridor and I crash open Elizabeth’s door.
She’s lying in her bed. She is here. She’s not in the flames. I must not wake her. I run over to her, touch her face. She’s real. She’s alive.
“Pearl?”
I run out of her room and down to Nana Willow. When I rush in, I see the shape of her fragile bones sticking through the blanket. The steady rise and fall of her breathing.
Who was it? I want to scream. If it wasn’t you, Nana Willow, whose face was burning in the coffin?
In the bathroom, my knees are on the cold floor. A feeling of sickness grinds in my belly, but nothing comes up. I breathe. Slowly, I breathe.
Did I imagine it? It was so quick.
My hair sticks to my neck with sweat, with the memory of the heat of the fire. The hand, its fingers melting.
Someone knocks on the door. “Pearl?” It’s Heather. “I need to prepare morning meal. Will you sit with Elizabeth?”
My legs shake as I stand up. I brush my skirt straight with my hands, walk to the basin, turn on the tap, and splash cool water onto my face.
“Pearl?” Heather again.
“I’m coming,” I say.
I open the door and walk back toward Elizabeth’s room.
She has gotten worse. Her lips are so pale and her forehead is creased with pain.
“Do you need to drink?” I ask her. I’m still shaking as I sit on her bed. My stomach is trying to smooth itself as my mind seeks sense. Elizabeth shakes her head. She’s breathing deeply, but the air sounds trapped. Her red and swollen fingers grip the sheet.
She opens her eyes and looks at me. “I’m scared, Pearl,” she says.
“Don’t be,” I say. I take her hand in mine and kiss her palm. There was a hand in the fire. I want to tell Elizabeth, but I can’t. “You have had a baby before.” I try to smile. “You will be fine.”
“It wasn’t like this,” Elizabeth says, then she breathes in sharply.
“Shall I rub some berry oil onto your stomach?”
“It doesn’t help,” she says, her words disappearing into wheezes of pain.
I’m frightened too. But I won’t show it as I kiss her hand again. “Everything will be fine,” I say.
Elizabeth closes her eyes.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I’m sitting on my bed, trying to brush my hair, but all I can hear is the bonfire. The crackle as the hair disappeared to the bone. I blink my eyes, but it is still here.
When Heather comes into the room, the fire disappears. “Papa S. has asked for you,” she says.
“What do you mean?” I ask, standing up. But already I know. It can only mean one thing, that I am to be his new Companion.
“He wants to see you in his chamber.” Heather’s words are flat. Does she have a forbidden feeling of jealousy? Or is it more?
“Now?” I ask. Heather nods. I have waited so long for this moment. I should be happy. Yet a feeling of dread is weighing thick in my stomach. “But what shall I wear?”
Heather looks at me, standing in my nightdress. “You can just go like that,” she says and then she walks from the room.
I look over at Kate, but she’s busy straightening the sheets on her bed. Her back is to me and she doesn’t turn around. It’s Ruby who runs over to me and starts jumping on my mattress.
“You’re going to be a Companion,” she says, her voice almost a song.
“We don’t know that,” I tell her. I want to share her excitement, and I don’t know why I can’t.
“You will be,” she says, her young arms stretching up to the ceiling.
To be Papa S.’s Companion. It’s what we all dream of.
I reach for my dressing gown and put it on and slip my feet into my slippers. It seems wrong that I’m going into Papa S.’s chambers, yet I am only in my nightdress. I wish I could wear one of my skirts. My silk one, or the purple one that Rachel gave me.
I look at Kate as she pulls her nightdress over her head.
“Where do I go?” I ask. “Kate?”
“Go through the closed door at the end of the corridor,” she answers. But she’s avoiding my eyes.
“Really?” I want to reach out to her. Have her tell me that I’ll be all right.
“You’ll find the way from there.” She looks at me for just a second, before she goes to the basin in the corner and picks up her toothbrush. So I walk out of the room without saying another word.
Jack is coming up the top of the stairs, just as I go down the corridor. He must have been working with the horses, as even from here I can smell them on him. He bounds up the last two stairs to get to me.
“Where are you off to?” he asks.
I feel suddenly awkward. “I’m going to see Papa S.” I say the words slowly.
“What, now?” Jack looks confused.
“Yes.” I look into his face and I see understanding creep into his eyes.
“Oh,” he says. I nod at him and then I walk on, because I know how big this moment is, that I am about to become a Companion for the very first time and I don’t want Jack to see the confusion in my eyes.
No one is in the corridor. The soft noises from the other rooms get left behind. I reach out to touch the wood-paneled wall. My fingers feel its smoothness and for a few seconds I close my eyes, so there’s nothing else, just me and its ancient secrets. I breathe in the air that Papa S. must breathe as he walks down here every day.
Opening my eyes, the door is almost in front of me. The door that I have never been through. It’s made of a wood so dark that it’s almost black. Its handle is a carving of a lotus flower, painted and varnished so that it shines. I reach out and touch it, turn it, and slowly push it open.
The door makes no sound. No one would even know that I’ve walked through it as I close it behind me.
I’m in another short corridor. There is a small, round window that must look out over the fields, but all I see is black. I’m cold, so I pull my dressing gown tighter over me as I go to the door at the end.
I stand and wait. What shall I say to him? How shall I be? How will I become his Companion? Suddenly I feel an overwhelming fear and my feet are moving backward, but the door swings open. And
Papa S. is standing here.
“Pearl,” he says, in that voice I love. And I no longer understand anything, because he is Papa S. and surely he is everything? I go into his arms as he wraps them around me. And I try to feel safe. “Let’s look at you,” he says, stepping back. His skin looks older in this light, where the sun has touched it and turned it to wrinkles.
He has changed from his day clothes. Now he’s wearing a long cloak that reaches to the floor. It is made of shimmering gold and I just stop myself from reaching out to touch it. His long, gray hair flows around his shoulders and it makes me think of a waterfall in the moonlight.
“Come in,” he says, and he takes my hand. I am holding the hand of Papa S. Am I now his Companion? Was this really what I had been frightened of? I want to laugh with relief.
I pause just inside the room, because it’s like nothing I have ever seen. The walls are covered with tapestries of sunsets and birds and flowers. I remember the long winter hours spent watching the women of the house with their colorful threads. I have sat, cross-legged, with a tapestry of my own, jabbing the needle through the holes, pricking my skin, but never enough to draw blood.
“Here,” Papa S. says. He’s still holding my hand as he leads me over to the corner. I recognize it instantly. The small tapestry I did of a robin a few years ago. I giggle as I remember my frustration at getting the lines of the beak straight. How worried I’d been that I might run out of the right red for his chest. At the bottom, my name is sewn in black thread.
Papa S. smiles. “It is very good.”
There is carpet on the floor in here. It’s not like the carpet in the sitting room, which is almost worn through to the wooden boards. Here, it is deep and soft. Papa S. sees me looking.
“It is the color of pearls,” he says. “Why don’t you take off your slippers, feel it on your feet?”
I look up at him and he nods, so I do as he says. It feels like I’m walking on clouds.
I gaze over at the heavy curtains that reach to the ground, closed tight against the dark outside. And in the middle of the room, there is the biggest bed I have ever seen. It has posts rising up from each of its corners and material sweeping down all around it.
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