The Turnaway Girls

by Hayley Chewins

  It’s the Sea-Singer.

  I’ll never forget her face as long as I have memory in me. I stared at it every day in the cloister, and sometimes when I close my eyes it’s there, clear as I’ve ever seen it. I see it with my heart.

  Mimm and Trick sleep in my lap, their bodies slotted together like two held hands. I stroke their wings, humming songs between sentences.

  Linna snuffs the hushingstone, and all the faces disappear. She’s wearing her dress of bells again, and every time she moves, she makes music. “How exactly did you live in the cloister for twelve years and not learn how to make shimmer?” she says. There’s a lilt to her words that tells me she’s at least half teasing.

  “Why does it have to be dark?”

  “We have to concentrate. Darkness is good for that.”

  I am more than comfortable being in shadow, but with Linna I want to be in the light. Her collection of smiles is the only hopeful thing in Blightsend. Especially now that she’s helping me slither past Mr. Crowwith’s threats, teaching me to make shimmer in the blink of a night.

  Empty hands must be filled, after all.

  Filled with lashes. Filled with blood.

  I wonder if Mr. Crowwith has a switch.

  “How exactly did you train for twelve years to be a Master and end up with a talent for gold?” I ask in return.

  “I believe my question came first.”

  “A secret for a secret?”

  Linna laughs. The sound fills the dark, bright as any gold. “I didn’t learn how to make shimmer,” she says. “I mean, no one taught me. I taught myself. The First Mother says if a girl is to be strong, she must be an autodidact.”

  “A what?”

  “An autodidact. Someone who teaches herself.”

  “But you learned from the First Mother?”

  “I read her writings. But I practiced on my own.”

  I think about the Master who growled at me at the Featherrut when he caught sight of my earring. Turnaway girls are like crumbled bits of hushingstone to Blightsenders. They’re what the city’s built on. They’re what the city treads upon.

  “But why would you want to know a turnaway’s trade?” Masters, more than anyone, walk on the backs of cloistered girls.

  “I tried to tell you the night we met. The First Mother believed that anyone could make shimmer if they took the time to acquire the skill. She didn’t think it was something only for turnaway girls.”

  Linna can’t see me roll my eyes. “And I tried to tell you,” I say, “that you couldn’t be more wrong.”

  “I’m not wrong.”

  The cloisterwings stir in my lap. “I am a turnaway girl, Linna. I think I’d know.”

  “You don’t think they teach lies in the cloister?”

  I try to match the whisper-room’s portrait of the First Mother with Linna’s description of her, but it’s like writing one half of a sentence in octopus ink and the other in your own blood. Mother Nine taught us that it was the First Mother who said we should be silent — porous for the music of others to flow through us. But then I think of the books in the cloister’s library — whole pages scratched to shreds.

  Mother Nine taught me wrong.

  Everything she taught me was a falsehood.

  “All right,” I say. “I believe you.”

  Linna doesn’t seem to mind that I took my time coming to this conclusion. “It was my father’s fault, probably,” she says. “There was a part of me that wanted to be like the magical girls inside the cloister. That wanted to be like any girl, really, because that’s who I always knew I was. But my father told me I could never make shimmer. So I had to prove it.”

  She shifts on the ground, the heels of her stone shoes scraping like a cleared throat.

  “I practiced for months. And then, the day before the Festival of Bells, I asked my father to play for me. My father — he’s almost as good as me, and he never says no to an audience. Anyway, while he was playing, I made a clump of shimmer the size of my fist. I dropped it at his feet.” She makes a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh.

  I remember the first time I saw Linna. Even then, her hands were stained with shimmer.

  “What did he say?” I ask.

  “He insisted that I’d stolen it. Said I’d weaseled it out of my pocket while he wasn’t looking. I kept arguing. He refused to believe me. I knew I had to do something. If I didn’t — if things stayed the way they were — I would’ve drowned. So I told my mother. She pulled out her old soapstress dresses. She helped me sew the bells onto one of them, stayed up with me until the sun started rising. And then I said good-bye. I had to say good-bye.”

  I nestle against Linna.

  “What’s that for?” she says.

  “You don’t need to make shimmer to prove who you are, Linna. Even without light, I can see you.”

  “The thing is,” she says, “it’s not only about me. I want all girls to be able to make music — or shimmer, or spotted-eel stew. Whatever they want. And boys, too, I suppose. But that’s why I had to leave. I couldn’t just be a Master and play music for the rest of my life, and make my father happy. I had to be me. I still see my mother at the festivals — but only for a moment or two. I miss her so much, but I don’t want her to get into trouble. I’ve told her to tell Mr. Crowwith she doesn’t know where I am.”

  “You’ll teach others,” I proclaim. “You’ll do it. I mean, you’re already teaching me.”

  There’s a crack in her laugh now. “You owe me a secret,” she says.

  I hide my face in my hands even though I can’t see my fingers in front of me. “I’m broken in my bones,” I say. “I’ve never been able to — Mother Nine says I’m stupid, that I’m too full of questions. That I’ve decided who I am instead of letting her tell me —” I want to explain everything to Linna, but it all comes clambering out at once in an ever-branching jumble. “There was this baby. I watched Mother Nine make —”

  Then there’s the sound of something falling. Crashing.

  “What was that?” I say.

  We choke on our own breath. The cloisterwings flutter against my chest as if my own heart’s loose and skittering.

  Shuffling, a shout, a muffled scream — then halting, uneven steps.

  Click — click. Click — click.

  The cloister rushes back to me — Mother Nine’s clanging heels.

  “What are we going to do?” I whisper.

  “Give me your hand,” Linna says. “I’ve studied the journals. I know this place.”

  I feel for her fingers. She pulls me, and my feet trample-trip, trying to keep up. I can hear Mimm’s and Trick’s wings flapping a little way behind us.

  My feet skim the ground behind Linna’s. There’s cold in my bones like a winter wind. And all the while, those click-dragging steps — relentlessly following, following, following.

  Then Linna crashes against something unyielding, and I ram into Linna, my cheek stinging against her shoulder blade.

  “Where are we?” I whisper.

  Linna doesn’t answer.

  “Linna?”

  “It — it ends.” Her voice is a claw, a scrape, a cry. “I didn’t think — I thought the passage, all the rooms — I thought they were connected. In a loop. That’s how he drew it in the journals. It must’ve been closed off.”

  She draws a shard of hushingstone from her pocket and ignites it. Fire flares, but I’ve never been this cold. The wall blocks the entire passage. There’s only one way out, and we can’t take it — the footsteps are coming from that direction.

  “Mothers!” whispers Linna harshly, dropping the stone and stomping on it.

  “Shhh,” I say.

  “There’s no point. We’re trapped. All we can do is wait.”

  The darkness seems to deepen.

  The footsteps get closer, closer, closer.

  Click — click. Click — click.

  And then they stop.

  I press against the wall, turning my face away
as though I’m about to be slapped. The shhhh of struck hushingstone knocks my vision like a punch. And then I see eyes. The Childer-Queen’s eyes.

  Mr. Crowwith is standing beside her.

  I’m pressed against the wall. My throat closes. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe —

  But Mr. Crowwith isn’t looking at me.

  He’s looking at Linna.

  “Master,” he pronounces, his mouth crumpling.

  I turn to Linna, look back at Mr. Crowwith. I’m trying to keep my eyes off the Childer-Queen’s staring, but she’s burning my cheek with it. When I finally glance her way, she mouths two words: “I’m sorry.” She’s leaning against Mr. Crowwith, one heel off the ground. She’s injured her ankle.

  Mr. Crowwith sneers, still looking at Linna. “There are those who would kill for the honor of being one of Blightsend’s finest, Aurelinn Lundd. And yet you choose to shame the position. That stunt with the dress of bells. Who exactly do you think you are?”

  “Call her by her real name,” I say, folding my arms. “Her name is Linna.”

  Mr. Crowwith looks at me as though it’s only now occurred to him that I exist. “Very well, then.” He turns back to Linna, smiling. “Linna Lundd. I’m sure you’re both aware that the punishment for hiding a girl-Master is death. And the Childer-Queen has been hiding you, hasn’t she?”

  I step toward him, but Linna grabs my arm. “Don’t,” she whispers. “It’s me he wants.”

  I glower at Mr. Crowwith, struggling against Linna’s grip. “You can’t kill the Childer-Queen,” I say.

  “I can do anything I want!” Mr. Crowwith shrieks. Then he straightens his coat, settles his shoulders. “When the Childer-Queen dies — when the Masters drag her to the cliffs for her treachery, as I have taught them the sea desires — they will turn to me to rule them. And then I, the Custodian of all your noise, will make Blightsend into the place it was always meant to be.” He lowers his voice to a whisper. “A silent place. A place without music.”

  “The sea desires nothing!” I shout. “It was you. You pushed the Sea-Singer into the sea — the sea didn’t take her.”

  Mr. Crowwith only snarls.

  “And it would be Bly’s throne to take, anyway,” I say.

  Mr. Crowwith laughs. “That blabbering riddler. Haven’t you heard? He’s obsessed with the Old Sorrows. Even as a small child, he wouldn’t leave the place. Clung to dusty curtains, ignored the helping hand of his Custodian —”

  “You trapped him there,” I say.

  He smiles. “Well, yes. But not the way I tell it. And that’s the thing about stories: the teller’s more important than the tale.”

  “If you can do anything you want,” Linna interjects, “why do you need me?”

  Mr. Crowwith brushes the Childer-Queen’s cheek with his knuckles. “The Masters love this pretty little face,” he says. The Childer-Queen recoils. “They loved the Ninth King. They even loved the Sea-Singer. I can’t simply tell of her treachery — I have to show it.”

  He pushes the Childer-Queen, and she falls forward, her hurt ankle failing her.

  “They won’t believe you,” she whispers. “They won’t believe I’ve been harboring —”

  “Oh, but they always do, in the end,” says Mr. Crowwith. “It might take a moment, but when they see what you’ve allowed Lundd here to become.” He looks Linna up and down.

  Linna scoffs. “I won’t go with you. I won’t help you lie.”

  “Of course you will. Because if you don’t” — he glances at me — “you must know, surely, what happens to turnaway girls who sing.”

  I want to run at him, to scratch at his smug throat.

  “I know all about you,” says Mr. Crowwith, eyeing me. “Silence, more than music, has its uses. The Sea-Singer should’ve known that.”

  “Delphernia,” Linna whispers, “let me do this.” She turns to Mr. Crowwith. “When?” she says.

  “No!” I say. “No!”

  Mr. Crowwith folds his hands in satisfaction. “Tomorrow evening. On the Festival of Queens. I’ve told the Masters to meet in the Garden of All Silences. I’ve told them that they will be pushing traitors into the sea” — he glares at me — “because the waves require it.”

  Linna’s face is white. But she dips her chin. “An oath to the sea,” she says.

  Mr. Crowwith nods. “An oath to the sky.”

  A howl lifts in the tunnel. The wind, the wind. The cloisterwings fly along the wall behind us, like the golden birds I made — searching the cloister’s dome for a crack to squeeze through.

  Linna steps toward Mr. Crowwith. She takes the Childer-Queen’s hand and helps her to her feet. The Childer-Queen’s eyes are pleading. Pleading for me to do what she asked me to do in the library. But I can’t, I can’t. They all turn from me — Custodian, Queen, Linna.

  “No, Linna —” I say. “Linna! Don’t!”

  She ignores me. She walks away.

  “Linna!” I call. “Linna!”

  But she doesn’t stop, doesn’t turn back.

  “Linna, you can’t —” I whimper.

  “You’re free to go now,” says Mr. Crowwith over his shoulder. “Your friend has saved your life.”

  The Childer-Queen’s golden heels scuff stone. Click — click. Click — click.

  “I won’t,” I say, following, grabbing at Linna’s elbow. She pulls away, doesn’t meet my eyes.

  Mr. Crowwith does, though. He looks at me with the force of a thunder-cracked sky. I feel small and scorched as a splint of hushingstone.

  “This is a game for kings and Masters,” he says. “Not invisible girls.”

  And he blows out the flame in his hand.

  Howling, howling.

  It’s only the wind, Linna said. But Linna isn’t here. It’s just me — me and the dark. I’ve heard my fair share of gap-funneled squalls, and this sound — this is something else.

  This is a voice.

  But maybe my mind’s snipping a story out of nothing.

  I whisper for Mimm and Trick, feel around in the empty space, but my fingertips don’t find feathers. They find only grit. I narrow my eyes, trying to see around me, but it’s like peering through ink.

  My heart’s a mess of tides. Linna, shimmer, footsteps. Mr. Crowwith. He’s taken her. He’s taken her. He’s going to send her to the cliffs.

  The howling voice lifts and lifts. I crouch, crawling tentatively through the blackness toward it. I hold a hand out in front of me until I find the wall that Linna knocked into earlier. Stone stacked on stone. I run my hands along its grooves, pulling myself to standing. No openings — no, there’s one, there. I grasp at it, slip two fingertips through it.

  I whisper into it. “Shhh, wind,” I say.

  The sound settles.

  And rearranges itself into a song.

  It’s a looping song, coming back — always and always — to where it started. Like the song I heard when Linna first brought me to Hiddenhall. Like the songs of the cloisterwings. It’s coming from behind the wall.

  I know, I know.

  I hold my ear to the hole, standing achingly still, letting the song curl up inside me.

  “I am not the wind,” the song says.

  Mimm and Trick land on my shoulders, pecking at my ears, telling me to listen. Listen, listen.

  The song dips into silence.

  “Who are you?” I whisper, speaking into the fissure, smelling damp and salt and seaflowers.

  But the singer doesn’t answer, only pushes the melody up again, the notes rising like steps.

  “Please,” I say. “Tell me.”

  The singing stops.

  “My name is Sveglia Emm,” says the voice.

  “Sveglia Emm.” My lips brush against rock. “How long have you been down here?”

  “Years, years, years.” I hear nails scratching at stone.

  I stare into the thickening dark. The cloisterwings shuffle their wings beside me, confusing my ears with feathers. A prick of li
ght catches my eye, and I wait, watching. It’s one of my golden birds, pushing its way out through the stone, from Sveglia Emm’s side to mine, as though she has sung it.

  I turn from the wall and run.

  The howling’s beginning again.

  “The keys,” the voice calls, pitching higher. “The keys. The keys. The keys. The keys.” Speaking turns to singing turns to screams. “The keys!”

  I run all the way to Hiddenhall’s entrance. The statue of Rullun Harpermall above me lifts and then slides to the side to reveal the dawning sky, night leached away by streaks of early morning sun.

  I hurry up the ladder, gripping the gold-shining bars, my feet slipping.

  When I climb out of the tunnel, I look back and see that the cloisterwings have not followed me. They swirl and circle below, far below, the golden bird lighting the edges of their wings as it twists and twirls past them, flying up and over my head. I cannot bear to leave them there. Alone. Without Linna.

  “The keys!” I can still hear Sveglia Emm screaming. “The keys! The keys! The keys!”

  I whistle and chant, but the cloisterwings won’t follow. They must be scared to leave the tunnels, just as I was scared to leave the cloister.

  “Please,” I beg. “Mimm, Trick.” I sing a flutter of notes I made up in the hollow tree, and they settle on the ground, tucking their wings against their bodies and snapping their heads at me. “Come with me,” I whisper. My eyes fill with tears.

  Rullun Harpermall’s statue starts to slide back over the hole. I jump away and fall, my back hitting cobbles. I close my eyes. Tears run down my cheeks.

  “Mimm. Trick.” I can’t go back down there now. Not when there’s so little time. Not when Linna is going to the cliffs. My lungs burn. Wings, trapped behind stone.

  I open my eyes to the morning’s white blearing. There are two spots in the sky above me. I sit up, laughing, my chest heaving. The cloisterwings. Mimm and Trick — they followed me. They followed my voice.

  I didn’t lose them. I haven’t lost everything. I call to them, and they swoop toward me, clattering their beaks at my ears.

  The Festival of Secrets is over. Today is the Festival of Queens. The area around the Featherrut is still empty of people. But it’s strewn with little glass bottles with secrets inside them, written on dried tongue-fruit leaves, which the citizens of Blightsend were supposed to send out to sea. Maybe the sea spat them out. Maybe it’s tired of secrets. I am tired of secrets.