The Turnaway Girls

by Hayley Chewins

  “Go on, now,” Mother Nine mutters. “Be a good girl.”

  The thing is, though, good girls don’t sing in hollow trees, don’t meet eyes with Masters on the wrong side of walls. They don’t lift their gaze in the whisper-room, don’t walk toward the First Mother’s face. They don’t smile when they hear of the Sea-Singer’s transgressions, the fires she lit in caught gardens, the way she desecrated the Garden of All Silences by flinging her voice against metal.

  But I do.

  That’s how I know I’ll never be good — unless I cut out my own heart entirely.

  Unless Mother Nine plucks my voice right out of my throat.

  We lie on our backs on the cobbles of Teeth Row — me and the othergirls. The mist loosens curls from my pinned bun, ties white knots around my ankles. I can barely see the Sea-Singer’s eyes through the haze. But I squint, staring into them.

  Mother Nine says the staring’s for our own good — to remember who we are not to become. Which doesn’t explain why she made the Sea-Singer’s eyes so full of I-am-right. But I won’t ask again. I only have so many fingernails.

  “This will be your final Silence lesson before the Festival of Bells,” says Mother Nine. “You’d be wise to practice well.” She glances in my direction. And then she motions with her hands to call the cloisterwings.

  Everyone works here, even the birds, and the cloisterwings know that Mother Nine’s flicked fingers mean food. They’re clever creatures, they really are. They know a thing or two about pleasing.

  The cloisterwings swoop from trees, black-shining wings beating through air, cawing a rippling, layered song.

  We can’t make shimmer — or anything else — from the songs of birds, but they help us to practice our Silence: stilling our thoughts until they center only on the forever-ribbons of the notes.

  The cloisterwings don’t make songs that start in one place and end in another. Their songs travel in circles, always coming back to the beginning. The First Mother taught them to sing like that. She taught them circle-songs because she believed that where we begin is where we end.

  The othergirls smart as the birds dive and swivel, whipping up air and wearing smooth trails of mist as cloaks. They’re scared of the cloisterwings because the legend goes that they were born of stone, which makes their wings as sharp as knives.

  It’s true that they have hard edges — the tips of their feathers could slice tongue-fruit skins. And it suits me that the othergirls find them frightening — the trees are all my own that way.

  But I’ve been up close to the cloisterwings when they’re tucked in their nests. In the night, in the quiet, I have touched their ball-of-thread heads. I have sung to them, reminded them of soaring, and seen them flying in gentle circles above me.

  I know what the othergirls don’t.

  I know that it’s only when we’re all awake and there’s a chance of them being caught by Mother Nine — plucked for feathers or smacked for singing too loudly — that they spin in rapid whirls. When they don’t feel threatened, they are not a threat. You could hold them in one hand if you weren’t as small-handed as I am.

  I close my eyes when I hear Mother Nine’s hammering heels. I don’t want to see her, but I can’t stop listening to her steps. I can’t stop following rhythms. I tap a finger on the ground and a pattern of low notes rumbles in my throat. I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth to stop it. The othergirls breathe slow and slower.

  I exhale.

  No one noticed.

  The cloisterwings draw out wing-beaten rhythms, chirping out looping trills, and it’s only then that I remember: I’m supposed to let their singing rush through me. But I’m not easy to open. The closed drawers in my knees and knuckles stick from damp. My blood is thick as cobble-mud.

  The birds’ music — and wind, wing-wallop — fills the cloister to bursting. It fills me up, too. I clench my teeth to keep from singing. I try to remember that the blood’s barely dried on my torn thumb.

  Here they are — the instruments of my closed world. Mother Nine’s click, click, clicking on uneven cobbles. The othergirls’ breathing, harmonious as flutes. The thrashing call of the sea and the lifting chords of the cloisterwings’ choir. The slice-soar of their wings through a thick breath of mist.

  There’s a grumble in my throat again. A single note. It climbs up from the base of my spine. My lips part.

  And I swallow it down.

  Because Mother Nine’s face is over mine, its folds a shadowed dance of threats. I tangle my fingers together, all bandages and scabs, and dig them against my stomach. I try to make myself as small as a dropped feather.

  “Lungmoss will speak my name long before a Master chooses a girl like you.”

  I look past her snarl. Through stirring wings, I can see the Sea-Singer’s eyes. Unblinking. Unwavering.

  Mother Nine steps away from me and scatters bits of dried seaflower across the ground.

  The cloisterwings fall silent, dropping from flight to peck at stale morsels.

  Today is the day — the Festival of Bells. Everything ringing into change. Or silenced for the rest of time. Either I’ll be chosen, or I’ll be stuck. As good as dead. Kept from the sky until I’m only bones.

  I drag my nails over the scabs on my knuckles, pretend it’s Mother Nine’s skin I’m scratching. I’m tangled in a net she knitted. I try not to think of my future: Mother Nine growing older, running the questions and cries of little girls through her bones. Me, picking her teeth. Folding her silks into drawers. A prisoner. A turnaway girl who cannot make shimmer. Forever.

  I pretend at preparations, slicking my skin with wet loam and sap, wishing I could rinse this past week out of my heart. I’m supposed to be using salt, too, to scrub away rough patches on my elbows and knees, but I have too many cuts and bruises to do that — too many scratches that would turn to blood-flowers. I lower myself into a stone tub of hot seawater. My hand stings like a fistful of pins.

  Then it’s time for the dresses.

  We — me and the othergirls in my year — scuttle through dim passages, past rooms of backlit curls, lips that might as well be stitched. Rooms and rooms and rooms of younger girls with quiet, unquestioning hearts. And to think I used to wonder how Mother Nine managed us all.

  We file into our sleeping-room. I expect to find dresses laid out on beds, but there are none. A draft slinks past like a sneering laugh, but the othergirls don’t seem worried. They do what they do best: wait for Mother Nine to arrive. They might as well be sleep-standing. They might as well be made of stone.

  Then Mother Nine appears in the doorway, her eyes red. The veins in her neck bulge like hungry slugs. “There’s something that needs to be done first,” she says. “Can’t risk the stains.” That’s when I see the needle. “Your left ears need to be pierced. To set you apart from the soapstresses.”

  But that can’t be true — not entirely. Anyone could tell a turnaway girl from a soapstress. I’m sure they have their own breed of sufferings, but they’re not taught to empty their bones for the sounds of cloisterwings and the songs of walls. Their questions have not been cut out like a troublesome lung.

  No — this is something different. A way of reminding us that we are more ear than tongue.

  Mother Nine lines us up. When she gets to me, she takes my head in her hands, pushing against my bruised cheek. Then she slides the needle through the lobe of my ear, stops the hole with a dangling hook of gold.

  I close my eyes, and when I open them, I see blood. I wonder how much I’ve lost this week — and how much I’ve got left. The floor grows blotches.

  Mother Nine fetches the dresses, piles of fabric in her thin-wrinkled arms.

  I watch the othergirls slip into dirt-dyed silk, storm-cloud scars marking their wrists. Then I pull the stiff fabric over my head. The dress hangs around my body like a curtain. The shoes are a different tale, though: gold-stitched silk slippers with wooden heels. I hold one up to a lit hushingstone shard, watching embroidered patte
rns shimmer like a hidden language of leaf and wave and moon. I squish my feet into them and pretend I’m walking high above hurts, skimming my toes on a gilded pool of music.

  We are arranged in kneeling lines on the cobbles of Teeth Row — all the turnaway girls in my year. We’re packed arm to arm, the most talented at the front. I want to grab someone’s wrist and scream — scream for us all to be let out. But I don’t. I can’t. No one would listen to a turnaway girl, anyway.

  The closed skydoor is battered by the wind, its stone hinges grinding like a pestle and mortar. I try not to look up.

  “Sea-Singer,” I whisper, “hear me. Please. Please. Give me a miracle. Let one of them choose me.”

  Then I hear it: a knock from above, as though heaven has arrived to take a bowl of soup. Mother Nine drags the limp-legged ladder over to the skydoor. She climbs it, step by step, its rungs creaking beneath her weight. She turns keys in their stuck locks.

  The door to the Sea-Singer’s heart smacks open and Mother Nine hooks it into place. Then she climbs down and waits. The ladder shivers.

  And then I see: gold slippers on worn wood. White ankles. The hem of a coat, edged with glinting stitches. The back is embroidered with closed mouths.

  The man belonging to the coat steps noiselessly onto cobbles, turns to face us. His eyes are surrounded by moons of color, as if he’s never slept a night in all of Histories. I can see him clearly, but I can’t hear him. He wears no bells. If silence had a face, it would have his face. He’s as silent as we are taught to be.

  “Girls,” says Mother Nine, “this is Mr. Crowwith, the Custodian of Blightsend. He’s come to introduce the best Masters of our city.”

  She touches her fingers to her lips and closes her eyes. We all do the same. Even I obey. This man could decide my path.

  “Turnaway girls,” says Mr. Crowwith, walking to stand before us. His feet glide rather than click. His voice is low and rhythmless. “For the first eighty-nine years of Blightsend’s rich history, your kind did not leave the cloister — ever. You made shimmer for the island, sent up into the hands of Masters as the King saw fit.”

  A fire flickers in my gut, but the othergirls only nod in agreement.

  “It was the Third King, Lull Harpermall, who said that rewards should go to those who reward our ears,” continues Mr. Crowwith. “The tradition he founded has blossomed into one of the most hallowed on our rocky shores. Every twelve years, we celebrate a Festival of Bells, and the seventeen best Masters in Blightsend — all born in the year of the previous Festival — are chosen. On this day, each of these best Masters chooses a turnaway girl born the same year to make gold for his pockets. This year, the Childer-Queen has personally sewn the best Masters’ cuffs and hems with golden bells engraved with her name. And now they will make their pick of you.”

  He steps to the side and claps. His fingers are slender and delicate, but the sound is like the clattering of a dropped bowl.

  It doesn’t bother me, though. Because the clapping means they’re coming.

  The Masters.

  The best Masters.

  My beginning — or my end.

  Mother Nine has taught us what Masters wear, but seeing it is a different kettle of eel.

  The first Master I’ve ever glimpsed toe to nose climbs down the ladder with slow steps. He is dressed in music.

  His entire suit — a collarless jacket with wide sleeves that skims his knees, a fitted shirt and stiff trousers — is covered in gold bells. The edge of his headdress is fringed with them, too. And, because he’s one of the best Masters, his cuffs and hems are sewn with chiming clinks. His silken wood-heeled boots swirl with embroidered color: with the shapes of waves and vines. He looks as though he grew straight from the ground like that — all pride and shine. He looks as though he hasn’t ever heard the word never. As if it doesn’t exist in his bright language.

  The bells sound like falling mist as he walks.

  The othergirls do not move. Their eyes are fixed like stone saucers.

  “Turnaway girls,” Mr. Crowwith says, “this is Pall Wavethrone. The first of Blightsend’s best Masters for this Festival of Bells.”

  He motions to the boy, who unclips the instrument sheathed at his hip and holds it to his mouth. Then Mr. Crowwith chooses an othergirl from the front row with an impatient flick of his fingers. The girl stands beside the Master and turns rippling notes into beams of light as he plays, handing a smooth tangle of gold to him when she’s finished. He dips his chin to avoid her eyes and takes the gift.

  My eyes itch with wanting to look at the hollow tree, but I keep them on my own hands.

  Don’t tell, Delphernia.

  Mr. Crowwith walks to meet Mother Nine’s ear. Mother Nine nods, and the othergirl follows the Master up the ladder and out the skydoor. I imagine her seeing the whole sky for the first time. I bite my tongue.

  I watch the door, expecting the next Master to be the same as the first. But right away, I know this Master is different.

  This Master is wearing a dress.

  Her shoes are wood-heeled, silk, stitched with gold, like Pall Wavethrone’s. But a belled hem dances at her bare calves. Her dress is the deep red of soapstress silk, sewn with so many golden bells that only specks of the color peek through. Every step she takes is steady, as though each one is a word and she’s saying I belong here with every three she takes. There’s something about her that makes me think she could tiptoe across the sea. She looks made of light, all slants. She looks set for flying.

  My lungs buzz.

  She is what I dream of being.

  A girl-Master.

  Mother Nine’s always said only boys can be Masters, but my eyes are proving her wrong. A girl-Master stands before me. Before all of us.

  She’s wearing the traditional headdress, and beneath it strands of white-wisp hair play at her pinkish cheeks. She looks like a princess and a Master and a rebel. She looks like she could crack the stone dome of the cloister with one breathed note. Her palms are golden.

  She practically skips toward Mr. Crowwith, who seems to both recognize her and not recognize her. He frowns, brushing at his graying hair. All the furrows in his face seem to grow deeper, as though they’ve been inked. I hold my breath, waiting to see what will happen. Waiting to hear her name.

  “Turnaway girls,” says Mr. Crowwith, “this is —”

  “My name,” says the girl-Master, “is Linna. Linna Lundd.”

  Mr. Crowwith whispers viciously in her ear, the words blurred.

  Mother Nine stares at the ground and the othergirls follow suit, but I have to watch.

  This girl makes the roots of my eyelashes prickle.

  Mr. Crowwith has taken hold of her arm and he’s still speaking in her ear when she tugs away from him, unsheathes her stone-flute.

  And plays the most wing-full song I have ever heard.

  It sounds like a tree growing. It sounds like a kiss from a mother you never knew. It sounds like the color of the sky in the morning, before anyone else is awake.

  An othergirl steps forward, lets the notes run through her. She pulls them out of air and kneads them into gold.

  I close my eyes until I hear a cry and the music cuts off.

  Now I can hear Mr. Crowwith’s voice. It is dead and musicless. “If you think you are keeping a shred of that gold —” he says, dragging the girl-Master toward the ladder. He pushes her back against it and holds his mouth very close to her jaw, as though he is going to take a bite out of her. “You stupid, stupid child. What did you think would happen? That I’d let one of my finest Masters wear a soapstress’s dress sewn with bells and still keep his position?” He snatches her stone-flute from her hand and throws it behind him, into the patch of almost-dead trees. My trees.

  “No!” cries the girl-Master.

  But Mr. Crowwith stutters her throat with one hand, letting go only when she stops struggling. “You’ll leave now before you embarrass me any further. Music doesn’t belong to you any mor
e than it belongs to them.” He motions to us, the turnaway girls. Then he shoves the girl-Master again and she turns, crawling up the rungs with such tapping speed that her foot slips at the top.

  “Good-bye, Linna Lundd,” calls Mr. Crowwith. “I’ll deal with you when I see you next. Which I’m sure will be soon.”

  The girl-Master scrambles out of the skydoor, and then she’s gone.

  One by one, fifteen more Masters climb down from above, as though the sky itself has given them to us. They’re all boys, all in jackets hemmed with bells. They play well, but none plays as beautifully as Linna Lundd did. They choose fifteen more othergirls — girls who make so much shimmer, my eyes burn as if I’m staring into fire. The air glistens as if it’s been polished.

  Mother Nine keeps glancing in my direction, as though she’s peering at a bird hovering above my head. I try to turn my eyes to stone. She mustn’t know how scared I am of staying. I try, too, not to glance at the hollow tree. At the stone-flute lying in the lungmoss.

  By the time the sixteenth othergirl is chosen, the space where the Sea-Singer’s heart used to be has turned blush pink with streaks of blue.

  Evening has come.

  The girl-Master’s song still lives in my bones.

  The cloisterwings tap their beaks against the bars of their cages. They’re cawing and cackling for their dinner, and I wish for a second that they would eat me up — at least then I could be a part of something flying. Something singing.

  I am hoping blindly now — hungrily, as the starving hope for fruit. Hoping that someone will appear. Hoping there’ll be another Master. A Master to choose me. The girl-Master was sent away — maybe that means there will be another. Maybe they’ll find another boy.